A Chance To Change Everything
by The Rei-Fan
Summary: Second in the Toy Soldiers series. Shinji is sprung from jail, Mal meets somebody he never expected to see again. Monty saves the day! What were Jayne and Rei DOING in there? and..uh...what the hell, is that earth? We're being shot at by crazy people!
1. Old Friends, New friends

The next in the Toy Soldiers Series. Rei has come back, and she's going to need help. But, she's going to change everything.

* * *

Mal stared at the girl…no, woman before him, "Didn't think we'd be hearing from you so soon, been hearin' lots 'a chatter 'bout some purple demon causin all manner of havoc for the alliance, you wouldn't happen to know anything 'bout that would ya darlin?"

Rei grinned at him, something that nobody would have really expected from the girl they'd pulled from that cryo-pod five years before, "I might know something about that, heard tell that some girl got a fool notion in her head to take on the alliance, might know who she is." She winked at him.

Mal stared at her open mouthed, Rei Ayanami was talking like a border-worlder, and he found that it pleased him. "So then, much as I love a reunion I get a feelin' you wanted to talk to us for some other reason."

Rei's face lost its expression of happiness, she nodded. "I've been working a lot of things out the last few years, found some friends, people I thought I'd never see again. I learned some things. Asuka and Shinji, my friends, I guess you could say the only family I had…before. They died on Miranda, except…they didn't. They were too valuable to the alliance to risk experimentation on, they grew clones, the clones are who died, and nobody knew, Eva didn't know…

Anyway, that's not the point; the point is that what happened to River and what happened to Shinji are related. The 'Academy' was trying to re-create us, trying to make other children interface with Eva, they stripped River's limbic system to try and open her mind to the link, though they never got to test it because Simon managed to free her. I found that they still had Asuka and Shinji captive, the real Asuka and Shinji. I've spent the last five years gathering the resources and making the contacts I'd need to do this, and now I've come to you."

Mal nodded his head during her explanations, and he had a few questions, the most important one was, "Rei-girl, before we get too far into this talkin'… where in the gorram 'verse did you find this ship!? Gorram thing must be over four-hundred years old!"

"A well, maybe I can explain that" a man walked through the airlock onto _Serenity_ "ah, beautiful ship, Firefly, ought three right?"

Mal nodded, "Glad to hear the appreciation for my very fine ship, but you were talkin' on explanations?"

The man nodded his head, "Right, my name's Hiro Nagato, my friends call me Johnny. Anywayl, me and my old friend Eddie Kim found a derelict ship ohh…goin on fifteen years back, found this cute girl hangin out in a freezer, near scared the crap outta me." He gestured to Rei. "had to put her back in cryo quick though, alliance was comin up on us and we were in no shape to fight, figuring that the only reason the alliance would want such an old piece of crap was for what was inside, so me and Eddie made to hide the pods we found, strapped them together and dropped them into the black, figure the ship was big enough a few croypods wouldn't register different from it on scans.

Well, short version from here is that we made to fight, got off a good shot on the alliance ship, but we took a few hits and that was all the old girl could take. I rigged up the drives for full burn and Eddie sent me back to the _Blackjack_ and I ran like hell, wasn't long after that Eddie rammed the alliance _hun dans_ and sent them straight to hell." He sat on one of the crates in the cargo bay of _Serenity_, "Anyway, I was flyin by my self for a few years when I had come across what looked to be the damn near duplicate of that ship, she was anchored in the gravity well of Athens, woulda never found her if the autopilot hadn't gone on the fritz.

Anyway I docked with the ship and got her all powered up. She'd been sitting there for a real long time waiting for somebody to wake her up. Was in much better shape than the ship me and Eddie had found, computer was in good shape and I at least figured this one's name out _U.S.S. San Antonio_ can ya believe that? An American ship, sitting there for that long right under the alliance's nose.

Anyway, once I got her running I found a few surprising discoveries, namely a pair of two hundred foot tall robots, backups for the ones Rei here was sent with.

Anywho, at the time I didn't know that, so I just kept this discovery to myself. That was until I saw the Miranda wave. A few months after that I kept hearing about attacks, huge robot-demon-devil, whatever they were calling it, and I knew it had to be her, caught up with her a few years later and we've been sticking it to the alliance ever since, lookin for anything else, any other ships, and above all that, lookin for those other kids."

Jayne stepped slightly forward and looked at Rei. He'd had respect for her, when she first came on he didn't much think about it, she was just a weak little girl, then during the fight over Miranda he'd seen what she'd done. Anybody can fight like that was ok in the Book of Jayne.

Mal was absorbing the story, and then nodded, "So, what exactly is it you need us for?"

Rei turned to look around the cargo bay, absorbing it, remembering it. She turned to the captain, "We're going to shut down the Academy."

"You got that ship, what do ya need us for?"

Rei shook her head, "I don't have much in the way of crew, and this ship and the Evas are more of a bazooka, we need a scalpel: you. The plan is that we send you and your crew to Osiris, infiltrate the facility, take out the guards and evacuate the test subjects. In practice it will be a little more complicated than that, but that's the basic outline."

Mal frowned, "How are we supposed to get in, more importantly, how much are we getting paid? I like ya well enough but my crew has a powerful need to eat."

Rei turned around and waved in some of her crew through the open hatch, they brought in five crates. Rei turned back to Mal, "five crates of un-imprinted foodstuffs should bring in a hefty amount of coin."

Mal's eyes lit up like a little kid's on Christmas morning, "We….we'll do it, how are we gettin' in?"

Rei gave him a look, it was eerily similar to that look River had when she knew something he didn't, "Simple, we have somebody who has been inside, an-"

"Wondergirl."

"-d escaped, s-"

"Wondergirl!"

"-he knows the layout, she can get you in."

Asuka stormed onto the ship, "Hey Wondergi-" Asuka's voice seemed to leave her body as she set her eyes on the big merc, she took in everything about him. Much like Kaji all those years ago, Asuka was falling for a man she could never have: Jayne Cobb.

Mal looked confused at the woman that just walked in, she looked about 30. "Who is-"

Rei answered him before he could even finish asking. She addressed the entire crew, "I'd like you all to meet Asuka Langley Soryu." she turned to Asuka, "Asuka, I'd like to introduce you to the crew of _Serenity_" She gestured to the crew and named them in order, "Simon and River Tam, Zoe, Wash, Jayne, Mal and Kaylee."

Asuka looked at the crew that she was going to help infiltrate the Academy, She looked at each of them. Then she looked at River. _How is this scrawny little girl going to help?_ She eyed River, "What exactly is it that _you_ are useful for?"

Mal glared at Asuka, not appreciating her condescending tone towards his reader, "She's a reader, saved our lives more 'n a few times. She's not bad to have around in a fight either."

Asuka laughed, "No such thing as a mind reader, you think I'm stupid?"

River smirked at Asuka in that creepy way that said 'I can kill you with my brain' "You think Jayne is sexy, you want to see him without all those clothes so that you can find out if he's big all around."

Asuka's jaw hit the floor in shock. Jayne smirked. Rei burst into tears she was laughing so hard, she'd never seen Asuka so shocked. Asuka turned to Rei and tried to divert attention away from that little revelation, "Wondergirl, you're really starting to freak me out with all the laughing and smiling."

Rei shrugged, "I like it."

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"Why are you so old?" Jayne had no tact whatsoever.

"Excuse me?!" Asuka's face turned red, she was pissed.

Rei, thankfully, interrupted before punches could be thrown, "She woke up before I did, she's been out of cryo-stasis for ten years longer than me."

They were eating dinner, Rei had delivered real food to _Serenity_ and in thanks Mal had invited the two to eat at their table. Swallowing his food, Mal opened his mouth to speak, "so, what I don't understand is why they were cuttin' on River to make her, well, like you. I conjure ain't none o them robots left that they knew about."

Asuka directed her glare away from Jayne and spoke up, "They made their own." She was about to go into further explanation when the proximity alarm rang out in the dining room. Wash ran to the bridge and saw what it was that triggered the alarm on his radar screen, "_ta ma de_ captain you need to see this!"

Mal ran for the bridge, Rei and Asuka were right behind him, if it was enough to set Wash off like that then it could be something the _San Antonio_ would have to take care of.

Reaching the bridge Asuka stared out at the forms that were now big enough to clearly see through the forward windows. What she saw made her blood run cold. There were four evangelion units, bodies pure white and they had clearly visible drive units attached to their shoulder pylons, eyeless heads with huge gaping mouths full of teeth. The were headed right for the _San Antonio._ Asuka swore, "Was für ein Haufen Scheiße!"

* * *

Chapter one down, more to come. R&R, you know the drill.


	2. Eva Launch!

Chapter two of the second story in the Toy Soldiers series.

* * *

Rei reached around Wash and slapped her hand down on the transmit key, broadcasting to the _San Antonio_, "Weapons released, lock and fire on targets bearing two-seven-zero mark zero-zero-three authorization Ayanami-Delta-Delta-five-three-nine!"

The tinny voice on the other end of the channel responded nearly immediately, "_Authorization confirmed, arming positron array, will be ready to fire in one minute and thirty-five seconds_."

In the years since Shinji had shot Ramiel with the positron rifle in Japan, technology had improved drastically, positronic technology had become such that the efficiency of input wattage to firing power had become nearly 1:1. In addition to that, power generation had become much more advanced, to a point where even a ship such as _Serenity_ would have enough power to fire the positron rifle that destroyed the fifth angel. The _San Antonio_ was much much bigger than _Serenity_. What hadn't improved however was the cooldown time between firings, and being in zero atmosphere made the cooling take far longer than before.

Rei turned to Asuka, "Get back to the ship and prepare to roll-out unit-01 and 05." She turned her attention to Wash and Mal. "Mal, I won't give orders on your ship, but I think you should cut and run." And with that Rei ran from the bridge for her own ship, the docking-clamps releasing _Serenity_ moments later.

Mal wasted no time; once the clamps were released he sealed the airlock from the bridge. "Wash, get us clear."

Wash ran through a rapid startup sequence and soon after the main engine and thrusters began to hum with the vibrations of being online. He pulled the ship away from the _San Antonio_ and rotated away for main engine burn. It was then that one of the units noticed _Serenity_. "_ta ma de…_"

"Wash…" Mal said, looking at the unit breaking away from the main attack and headed directly for them.

"Yeah, I see it. Kinda wish I hadn't." he lit the thrusters and throttled up to full, pulling around the _San Antonio_ trying to keep the bigger ship between them and the eva chasing them.

The _San Antonio_ was not a small ship, for a frigate she was rather large, just south of destroyer in terms of displacement. She was a Raven-class assault frigate, or she was before the U.S. branch of Nerv began the modifications to her. The basic structure however was the same. Four gunship launch ports and a bigger landing bay for transport ships on either side of the main body of the ship, which was long and flat, with a slight curvature, leaving the sides slightly lower than the top. There was a bridge setting high to starboard on top of the ship.

Wash spun the ship and aligned with the docking bay and waved the bigger ship, "_San Antonio,_ this is _Serenity, _requesting immediate landing clearance, we're under attack."

"_Clearance granted Serenity, we can give you a fifteen second window, on your mark."_

"This is _Serenity,_ acknowledged. Mark." And Wash threw the thrusters to full throttle, heading straight for the now open landing bay. As they neared the bay one of the white evangelion units shot into view in front of them, blocking their landing. Wash panicked a the sight, his panic was short-lived, however, as three slugs slammed into said unit in rapid succession, blasting through the core and entry plug and out the other side. Wash and Mal both turned their heads upwards to see a bright orange and black eva unit 'standing' in space, holding what for all the world looked like a gigantic shotgun.

A wave sprang up on their screen and Asuka's smug face popped up on it, "Serenity_ the path is clear, you're welcome._"

The old firefly slid between the closing doors of the landing bay and set down on the floor. After the bay pressurized the cargo ramp promptly fell open and Mal, Zoe, and Wash ran out of the ship, inspecting the hull for any damage in case they had to try and run. Wash was surprised to see another firefly in the bay, this one looked a little more beat up, and was armed, which surprised him, but for now he had to make sure his own ship was in order, so he ignored it and kept on working.

Inside the ship River was standing in the cargo bay, staring blankly into space when she spoke, "won't make it on their own…"

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Asuka was in her element, fighting in the eva was one thing she felt completely confidant in. After the positron array fired, only one of the attacking units was destroyed, the others were not even hit, and so it fell to her and Rei to clear the skies. She had been impressed by the changes in the girl, she wasn't the Rei she'd known before, wasn't that same doll anymore, Asuka liked that.

She hadn't been in a fight since…it was best not to think of that time. She hadn't lost her touch; although fighting in zero-g wasn't something she had quite mastered. She had been in the black for fifteen minutes fighting before she made the first kill, blasting the unit attacking _Serenity_ as it attempted to block her path. The second kill was easier, the unit had come up behind her trying to grappled Asuka's unit and snap its neck, she wasn't so easily defeated, she fired the flak out of the shoulder pylon directly into the skull of the offending unit and spun in place to fire the shotgun through its core. That's when the alarms went off in the plug. "_Attention, fuel cell failure, two minutes activation time remaining, radion-accelerator drive offline, limited mobility mode activated, liquid fueled thrusters engaged"_ She let out a string of Chinese, English, German, and Japanese expletives as she yanked hard on the controls, trying to turn the unit around. _Two minutes, three units left, you can do this Asuka._

In spite of her internal motivational speech she was still unsure if she could do it.

Unit-01 was taking too many hits, it was all Rei could do to keep the AT field up and her unit in one piece. Her attention was solely on keeping the _San Antonio_ from being destroyed, so her offensive options were limited, she couldn't win alone, and when the activation time on Asuka's unit ran out her blood ran cold. Even without power and the unit itself being offline the maneuvering thrusters and liquid fueled boosters would still work, they were operated independently of the main eva control systems, but it didn't matter, even if she could move she couldn't fight.

Rei was about to give the order for _San Antonio_ to go full burn and run for it, leaving her behind, when something completely unexpected happened; the previously inactive Unit-06 shot from the port launch tube of the ship. Solid fuel booster rockets strapped to its shoulder brackets, it flew directly into the fight. The eva cut the boosters loose as it reached the battle, rotating to a 'standing' position in space, snapping a pallet rifle into position and firing on the white creatures. The lead unit was peppered with shots, one of them tearing through the chest armor and taking out the entry plug, effectively disabling the unit.

Rei sat in her own plug looking at the fight for a moment before joining in. _I don't know who that is, but its two on two, we can win this._

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Mal had arrived on the bridge of the _San Antonio_ as the rogue unit launched from the ship. Immediately after the launch the bridge crew went into action, trying to figure out what exactly had just happened.

"Who's piloting that thing?"

"How did they get past security?"

"Somebody figure out what the hell is going on!"

Mal just watched the fight through the bridge windows, there was something creepifyingly familiar about the way that unit was moving…

Mal felt a buzzing in his pocket and pulled out the small radio he'd brought with him, he answered it and was surprised to head Simon's voice on the other end of it.

"Is River with you? She's not on _Serenity._" Simon's voice had a worried tone to it.

Mal just stared out the window at the fight, disbelievingly. "That girl is _boo-tai jung-tzahng-duh_." He said, quietly and to himself. He picked up the radio and held it to his lips, "Uh, yeah, doc, I think she went for a walk outside."

It took a moment for the realization to set in, and then Simon swore, "Son of a bitch."

* * *

Another chapter down, another twist. Review, praise me, send me pictures of money.

* * *


	3. The Dance of Destruction

Here is chapter three, enjoy

* * *

Using the minimal maneuvering left to her by the external thrusters, Asuka maneuvered the eva into the retrieval bay of the _San Antonio_ and let the artificial gravity feed pull it to the deck. She pulled the eject lever under her seat and the plug shot out the eva's spine, braking thrusters slowing its momentum as it hit the deck. She opened the escape hatch, flushing LCL across the deck plating, and exited the plug, then sprinted to the bridge lift and activated it, riding the express to the command deck.

She stepped off the lift onto the bridge in time to look at the aft monitors and see the enemy eva that had been thought disabled re-activate. She also saw it pick up the shotgun she'd dropped. She snapped into action and ran forward onto the bridge yelling out orders, "Recharge the positron array and prepare to fire!" She turned to the helm station, "All engines full reverse, bring us about and align for fifteen degree horizontal axis blind-fire sweep on the target!"

After a moments hesitation the bridge moved into a flurry of activity, the ship spun about on its axis as the drives spun up, pulling the ship in reverse and aligning for a sweep of the positron array.

"Ma'am the array isn't charging, the circuits are broken, we can't fire!"

She looked at the fire control panel and the red lights indicating a failure of the firing mechanisms, the color momentarily drained from her face, then she snapped out of it, "Bring all conventional weapons online, lock diamondback missiles and fire a full spread! Bring anti-gunship turrets online and put as much flak between us and that thing as you can!"

Mal stood staring out the windows, watching not the eva headed towards them, but the forest green evangelion fighting off in the distance. _Don't get yourself killed._

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

River was sitting inside of herself. Actually, she was sitting in the entry plug for unit-06, however, the state of her brain, all her defenses gone meant that she felt everything the eva did; there was however an advantage in that she was controlling the eva directly as if it was her own body. In a way, it was.

She had stolen the eva and launched into the fight, knowing that she had to help. He feelings, premonitions, had kept her and her family alive in the past, she couldn't ignore them now.

She was fighting off the mental contamination as best she could, but it was only a matter of time, she had to be fast.

After dumping the rocket boosters she snapped her rifle up and fired through the lead unit, tearing the entry plug apart and, hopefully, killing whatever was piloting it. She turned to the next unit and peppered it with bullets from the rifle, putting holes in its torso and limbs, one shot even blowing clear through the head. The rifle clicked empty and she dropped it. She activated her progressive knife, ejecting it from the shoulder pylon and took it into her right hand, and threw it into the core of the enemy unit, shattering it and killing the eva.

Nearby, Rei had just ejected spikes from the shoulder pylon of her unit, directly through the core of the second unit.

Neither had noticed that the third unit had re-activated and was heading for the _San Antonio_.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

"Ma'am! We're not getting enough damage through; we will be within its firing range in one minute."

Asuka was pissed, all this work, everything they had gone through to get to this point, it was going to be destroyed by a faulty fuel cell in her eva. "Give me options"

"Reconnecting the charging and firing circuits will give us the ability to fire within fifteen seconds."

Asuka shook her head at the fire control officer, "don't have the tim-"

A wave came through over the bridge speakers, "_Flight control this is _Blackjack, _you guys just sit tight and we'll uh…play the bait."_

Mal turned around and looked at the comm station next to him, surprised to see Wash's face on the screen, "Wash what in the sphincter of hell are you doin?"

"_uh, sorry mal, you're breaking up"_ and Wash cut the signal.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Wash was sitting in the pilot's seat on the bridge of the _Blackjack_ a newer model than _Serenity_; it was a 05-K64 with an improved radion-accelerator core. He hit the intercom switch for the engine room, "Johnny this is a really stupid idea, I hope you know that"

Johnny didn't reply over the intercom, but instead walked onto the bridge moments later, his work in the engine room done, "I know."

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

On the bridge of the _San Antonio_ tensions were high. The eva had closed within firing range of the ship, and had fired its weapon, tearing a large hole through the armor plating. The entire ship shuddered with the impact.

Asuka grabbed onto the railing as the ship seemed to shake apart around them, "Damage report!"

The crewman at the engineering station called back, "Hull breach in the forward quarter, decks one and two venting atmosphere. Targeting sensors offline, manual fire control only," he scanned down the list, "forward maneuvering thrusters offline." After a few moments a board in front of him lit up with green lights, "Ma'am, the positron array just came back online, it's charging to fire!"

Asuka's sudden grin was a welcome change, "Thank god for small miracles, wave _Blackjack,_ I've got an idea."

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

"That's insane…so, lets get started then." Wash closed the channel to the _San Antonio_, the plan Asuka had explained would be complicated for sure, but he liked complicated, made the flying more fun.

The _Blackjack_ shot past the white eva unit, Johnny was operating the fire control systems, firing hundreds of rounds of high caliber AP ammunition into its armor on their way past. They weaved back and forth, flying erratically to avoid being shot. "Wash, we really need to get behind him…"

"I know that, part of the nice plan, just a little hard what with the getting shot at."

They continued their evasive path, drawing their enemy farther from the damaged ship, directly into the minimum safe distance for the _San Antonio_ to discharge the positron array.

"Hey Wash, I think I have an idea about how to get behind him."

"I'm all ears, well; I've got other parts too…what's the idea?"

Johnny flipped a few switches on his console, arming the 120mm cannon mounted to the port extender. "I was thinking, how about a maverick?"

Wash's face lit up like he was just given a new toy, "Ohhhh a classic!"

_Blackjack_'s thruster pods swiveled backwards and slowed the ship considerably, causing the eva to overshoot; Johnny promptly fired the cannon and took out the drive unit on the eva's back.

The bridge crew of the _San Antonio_ saw the explosion and took it as their signal, moments later a stream of charged positrons lanced forward and slammed into the now-drifting evangelion, on impact the reactor breached and there was a very pretty light show.

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With the maneuvering power the _San Antonio_ had left they moved into position to recover Rei and River from space. The ship was sliding into position alongside the units when it deployed the magnetic tethers, upon contact unit-06 started to twitch and spasm, the comm crackled to life as a signal came through, "Can't…keep it out…its stealing her mind!"

Rei's eyes went wide; she knew was taking place, the same thing that happened to Yui. _Not this time, Not River! _She opened a wave directly to the bridge of the _San Antonio_, "Sever the nerve links, force eject the plug and recover the pilot!"

"_Not accepting the ejection signals ma'am"_ The technician's voice was shaky, nothing like this had happened before while he was on crew, it hadn't happened in over five hundred years if one was to be specific.

Rei punched slammed her hand down on her control yoke. _Damnit, emergency recovery procedure is the only choice…_ "Detonate the explosive bolts, force activate the rocket egress system!"

The bridge crew responded to her orders and the spinal armor disengaged from the unit after a ring of tiny explosions severed the links to the flesh. Moments later the burst of a solid rocket ignition was seen followed by the entry plug flying forth along a column of smoke, trailing various bits of wiring and electrical equipment behind it. Rei let out a sigh of relief, the plug had ejected before River had suffered irreparable mental contamination.

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Mal was standing in the dining area of _Serenity_ his assembled crew, minus Simon and River, seated at the table, "I don't know all the details, but what I know so far is this: River got it into her head that jumpin' in that big robot-beast-thing was a good idea. She's layin' in a bed in the _San Antonio_'s infirmary because of that. Simon is with her right now, and what Rei has told me is that the machine tried to 'steal her mind' I don't know what that means exactly, but I know that it's because of whatever the alliance did to her."

Mal took a breath and waited to see if anybody had something to say, Jayne did.

Jayne looked at everybody at the table before speaking, "Is this gonna be one of them 'big damn hero' things?"

Mal allowed himself a smile, "That's the notion."

Zoe cocked her eyebrow, "What's the plan?"

Mal shrugged, "Got no clue, conjure we work with Rei's group, see where it goes from there. Riv and Simon have become part of our crew, part of our family, I look out for my family, what they did to her head ain't right; I got a powerful need to show them they can't do that to folk. So there it is. If you don't want a part of it, I'm not gonna ask you to fight."

Zoe spoke first, "I'm with you sir."

Wash nodded, "I go anywhere Zoe goes."

Jayne shrugged, "ah what the hell, I'm in."

Kaylee smiled at her captain, "Somebody's gotta keep _Serenity_ in the sky."

Mal looked at his crew… no, his family, "Alright then, Zoe, wave Monty, Andrews, Tyler, anybody you can get a hold of from our unit, tell them the plan and where to meet us, we're going to war."

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On the bridge of the _San Antonio_ something entirely different was taking place. Rei and Asuka were looking over the footage of the battle when a crewman interrupted them, "Captain?"

Rei walked over to the crewman's station, "Yes?"

"Ma'am, the computer core is locked down, it's running a process called mag-init-delta-seven and I can't regain access. Ship's systems are offline due to lack of processing power to run them." The crewman was tapping keys on the console in front of him to no avail, the system refused to respond.

Rei looked over the console, "Mag-init-delta-seven…" as the words left her mouth she was interrupted by a computer generated voice.

"Voiceprint confirmed, Magi core systems activated, Melchior: Online, Casper: Online, Balthasar: Online. Ship systems control transfer complete. Activity log enabled, beginning playback."

The voice was replaced by a holographic projection in the middle of the bridge. "This is Commander Misato Katsuragi, if this message is being played than it means that one of the eva pilots has found this ship. If that is the case, than it seems our efforts were not in vain.

When contact with the _Katsuragi_, named after my father, was lost, this second ship was launched by Nerv-2 in the United States. Its goal was to find the _Katsuragi_ and failing that, go into hibernation and await signal from the other ship. We never found her, and so we're putting this ship into a shallow orbit around the gas giant Athens, it shouldn't be found unless somebody knows where it is.

Before we evacuate the ship I need to explain a few things: SEELE the organization responsible for the destruction of toyko-3 and subsequent destruction of Nerv-1 still exists, be careful and try to stay off their radar. We know what they are capable of and we can't let them destroy our last hope.

This ship is equipped with the latest anti-angel technology we had available at the time, the main positronic array should be able to punch through most AT fields, it will be sufficient to fight an evangelion unit to the best of our estimations. As you've discovered, there are two evangelion units docked inside this ship, with facilities for three more, should your eva units still be intact this ship is configured to support them. The activation of the evangelion support systems will trigger the activation of the magi and the playback of this recording, so it is assumed you have done so.

Finally, before I go, Rei, Asuka, Shinji, I miss you, I hope you are well, and this ship is our legacy, our gift to you, in the hope that if you are needed, you can once again defend the human race. I don't expect to see you again but if I do, I want you to know we are evacuating to Whitefall, I will live out the rest of my life there, so if you were to try to find me… I want you all to know, that knowing you for the time I had was the best time of my life, you gave me a reason to fight, to try. You saved me from my self destructive path, thank you. Good luck."

The computer voice came back, "Playback ended, recording date August 19th 2510"

Asuka looked at the recording and as it faded her eyes didn't move, tears started to stream from her eyes before she stopped them, "She...might still be alive, it was only thirteen years ago, she must have been asleep longer than us, the other ship had already been destroyed when this one arrived…"

Rei nodded her head and turned to the helmsman, "Set course for Whitefall, Full burn."

"Aye Ma'am"

The ship turned around hard, the damaged superstructure groaned in protest, but it held. The ship came about on a direct line for Whitefall and the twin Trace Compression Block engines spun up as they went to full burn. With a burst of light the ship lurched forward towards Whitefall.

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"…So we're headed to Whitefall to try to find her." Rei finished. She was standing in front of her comm panel talking to Mal.

On the bridge of _Serenity_ most of the crew was assembled. Mal, acknowledged the message, "Okay then, guess we're headed there with ya." She nodded, and he closed the link.

Wash smirked, "So, I guess this means Patience is going to have another chance to shoot you."

Mal put his hand to his head, "Everybody's gotta make a fuss."

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River sat upright in her bed in the infirmary, Simon was at her side, "_Mei mei_, how are you feeling?"

She looked at him, "like a two-hundred foot biomechanical construct tried to eat my brain."

Simon cocked an eyebrow at his sister. _That was fairly coherent…_

"Simon? Why so confused?" she paused for a moment, she realized she couldn't read anything from him, couldn't read anything from anybody, the voices were gone. "Simon, I… I can't hear the voices anymore"

* * *

chapter 3 down, i think im going to take a break from this story for a little while, i've got an idea for a different story that i'd like to work on, though i won't abandon this one.


	4. The Typical Landfall

Another chapter, hope you enjoy.

* * *

"From the scans I took in the medical bay, it looks like River's brain has, against all reason, healed. It's not a complete recovery, but it _is_ significant." Simon had assembled the crew, with the addition of Rei, in the dining room, which had become the de facto meeting room for the group.

Rei nodded her head, "I think I might be able to explain that. The eva was trying to take over her mind, take her into itself. I think that it might be possible that her brain was trying to protect itself."

Simon frowned, "I don't know how that could happen, the human body can't accomplish something like that…"

She scratched her head, "It's possible that she somehow accessed the eva's healing abilties. Eva has always been a mystery, and she was a very powerful psychic. And, I think it's important she never get into an eva again, considering what just happened."

She was answered by a chorus of nods from the assembled group.

* * *

Asuka was standing on the bridge of the _San Antonio_ as it began its descent into the atmosphere of Whitefall. The ship, while large, was still capable of landing, and so it was decided that they would do so. "Bring the bow up, angle to thirty-seven degrees, fire retro thrusters."

The plasma was covering the bottom hull of the ship, scorching the metal armor, taking miniscule layers off. It was enough to compromise the hull, but it did make a pretty light show. The pilot pulled back on his control column, "Yes ma'am. The controls are a bit…sticky…but it shouldn't cause a problem with the landing cycle."

Asuka nodded at the pilot and as the ship descended further into the atmosphere it slowed enough that the plasma stopped forming along the hull. "Deploy airbrakes and elevate the bow to forty-five degrees. Up-thrust to twenty five percent capacity and give me a ten second burst of the retro thrusters."

The ship settled into a gentle glide towards the terrain, moving to land near the planet's main settlement, their best chance at finding misato. Suddenly the ship rolled hard onto its starboard side before the pilot chopped up-thrust to zero and rolled the ship back over. It was now falling like a lead brick.

Asuka snapped her attention to the pilot, "Report!"

The pilot was struggling with his controls as he answered, "Ma'am, starboard bow landing thrusters have failed!"

"_Scheiße!_ Deploy the airfoils and drop the nose, rotate airfoils to twenty-five degree angle of attack and retract the airbrakes!"

Airfoils sprang out of the ship. They were primarily used during takeoff, to reduce the strain on the engines by producing aerodynamic lift. Using them in a landing was _not_ part of standard operational procedure. As they rotated the descent again slowed as the aerodynamic lift reduced the functional effect of gravity.

Asuka picked up the handset and spoke on ship-wide, "All hands, we're having some… uh…malfunctions in the landing systems, we're going to be on the ground a little sooner than I'd like, so brace for impact. Praying wouldn't go amiss." She turned to the flight control officer, "Lock down the clamps on _Serenity_ and _Blackjack_ keep them secure for landing."

The ship rocked and swayed as turbulence from the lower atmosphere buffeted the ship. As the ship dropped under two hundred feet altitude Asuka sprang into action, "Roll hard to port, bring the ship about and do full retro burn with the main atmospheric thrusters, bring landing thrusters to one hundred percent and compensate for the roll with the attitude control thrusters, deploy landing gear and prepare for hard landing."

The pilot complied and in a feat of acrobatics the ship rolled, the airfoils folded upwards at an un-natural angle as the force of the air was too much for them to cope with during such a violent maneuver. The ship spun about on its axis and the main atmospheric engines fired, the ships speed dropped to a safe landing velocity and the landing jets fired, bring the descent to a halt as the skids touched the ground. The ship slid backwards on its landing gear for a few hundred feet before it stopped.

Everybody on the bridge let out a collective sigh of relief. Asuka looked out the window, a little shaken. '_I can't believe that worked…'_

* * *

Johnny had his hand to his forehead, "This…is just…" He was looking up at the damage to the ship from his position on the ground, "The entire forward RCS cluster is gonna to need to be replaced, starboard landing jet cluster is a complete write-off, it's gonna need to need to be replaced and the area around it repaired. The airfoils can be saved…maybe; it's gonna to take a lot of work. The positron array is completely destroyed; it's gonna to take a very long time to fabricate a replacement. You should listen to me when I say don't land the ship!"

Rei suppressed a sigh, "You never said we shouldn't land the ship, Johnny."

"Yeah well…I should have!" He returned his attention to the ship to hide his red face. "This is going to cost quite a bit; don't imagine we're leaving for a while yet."

Rei deflated, "Just do what you can, take whatever parts you need from unit-06 if you think any of them will help, it's a complete loss anyway." Rei trudged off, things just got a lot more difficult.

* * *

Misato sat on the porch of her modest house on the edge of town. She'd been living there for close to ten years, she'd found the place a few years after landing on the remote little moon and fell in love with the place, and so she bought it with the money she made selling her shuttle.

Time had been kind to her, she didn't look a day over thirty-five. Modern medical science and a liberal amount of time spent in cryo made her possibly the most beautiful woman over the age of 500 in the 'verse.

She was startled when she saw her old ship screaming through the sky trailing bits of itself and flying erratically towards the plains outside of town. She ran back into the house and yelled for her daughter, "Andrea get the mule and bring it around front!"

Andrea was her mother's daughter, she had the same carefree attitude her mother had always had, but she was dead serious if the situation called for it. Her father was a crewman from the _San Antonio_. The relationship between him and her mother didn't last long, but he gave Misato a daughter, and she was thankful for that. They had stayed friends, and were raising their daughter when he'd died from a lung infection when Andrea was six, and so they were alone.

She called out to her mother, "What for?"

"Some friends showed up."

Andrea went into the garage and started up the hover-mule, she brought it around front and Misato climbed into the driver's seat, Andrea moved to the passenger seat. Turning the craft towards the direction of the ship and gunned the engine. '_Only one reason for that ship to be here…'_

* * *

Rei was busy replacing hull plating on the dorsal section of the ship. It was decided to re-purpose the evangelion replacement armor plating, as well as the armor plating from the now ruined Unit-06, to patch the hull. Since they lacked the proper dry dock facilities Rei was using Unit-01 to shape and place the places, taking the place of both a crane and a sheet metal fabricator. As she placed a section a crew of engineers would weld it into place and check it for leaks, if they found none, they would move on.

It was while they were doing this that a signal popped up on Rei's radar. She turned her attention to the contact. It was flying low to the ground, and it matched the speed and size profile of a medium anti-ship cruise missile.

That said, she was a little nervous about the contact, and so she turned from the ship and zoomed in the optical sensors on the now rapidly approaching trail of dust. She saw an older model hover-mule flying at extremely unsafe velocities towards the ship. She chose a word reminiscent of Mal, "huh."

* * *

Misato was staring up at the ship in awe, and, noticing a rather large mass of purple her jaw dropped. "Unit-01…?"

Andrea cocked an eyebrow, "Why the purple behemoth?"

Misato snapped out of her daze, "It's…the friends I was talking about." With that she pushed the engines harder.

Rei increased the view magnification as the mule got closer. She saw the face of the driver and blinked, shook her head, and blinked again to make sure she wasn't seeing things. It turned out she wasn't. "Misato, haha guess we didn't need to look after all…"

She opened a channel to the ship, "Hey Asuka, Misato found us! We didn't even need to look.

On the bridge, Asuka didn't even reply, she left at a dead run.

Rei suspended activation of the unit and ejected the plug, opened the hatch, and slid down the cable harness to ground level as the mule pulled up.

Misato jumped out before the mule had completely stopped. Her daughter was saner, and exited calmly after the mule actually _had_ stopped. While her mother was sprinting for the purple behemoth, she took a more leisurely pace.

Rei spotted Misato herself as she jumped off the cable harness onto the ground. She took one step forward in time to be nearly tackled as the older woman latched onto her in a nearly spine-snapping hug. She was stunned by the older woman's actions, and her facial expression reflected that.

After she released Rei from the hug Misato's rational mind took over, "Why were you piloting unit one and where is Shinji?"

Rei looked off into the distance for a moment, her eyes threatening to tear up as she thought about Shinji; she turned back to Misato and spoke, "He's not here…. It's a long story." She managed a weak smile, "It's very nice to see you again Misato."

Misato looked at Rei curiously; in her mind she was in disbelief. _'She's…different, she smiled, she's using first names… what happened?'_

* * *

Asuka squealed gleefully in a way that was highly inappropriate for a woman of her age. "Misato!" she ran to the older woman as she walked up the boarding ramp, nearly knocking her off her feet with the ensuing hug.

Misato caught her breath and smiled, "Hey Asuka." She took a step back as Asuka let go of her, and she looked back and forth between Asuka and Rei. "Why does Rei look so much younger than you Asuka?" She had a confused look on her face.

Rei spoke up, "She woke up ten years before I did. I only woke up five years ago when _Serenity_ found me. You'll get to meet the crew in a little while."

"Why did she wake up so much earlier than you?" Misato was curious about the circumstances.

"Well… It's a long story, and it has a lot to do with where Shinji is…"

* * *

Although she was just thirteen, Andrea had learned a lot about espionage. So much so, in fact, that she picked up the entire conversation taking place in the _San Antonio_'s briefing room from her position beside the air vent.

"…and that's where we are now. We're going to get him back."

After hearing Asuka and Rei explain everything that had happened, the experiments on River and the children, with Miranda, the details of Asuka's escape from captivity, Misato looked ready to kill. She had the look of fire she'd had so many years before on the bridge at NERV, back when the angel sucked him into the sea of Dirac, back when the eva absorbed him, the look that said she'd walk through the fires of hell and stare death in the face if she had to, just to get him back. The alliance was going to pay for this. There was going to be blood.

A determined edge in her voice, she spoke, "I'm in"

Outside, Andrea saw the look on her mother's face through the vent cover, heard the edge in her voice. It scared the hell out of her.

* * *

On a hillside overlooking the crash site a man stood. A man with grey hair, and red eyes, he looked down at the _San Antonio_, he saw and felt unit-01, felt the first child. "Lilith… you're really going after him aren't you? I…think I'll join you."

Beside him, a girl stood, "Me too, i... need to make it up to him... Mal didn't deserve it, none of them did. That's the right thing to do, make it up to them, isn't it Kaworu?"

He smiled, "Of course it is, Saffron, of course it is."

* * *

A chapter down, i said it was going to be on hold, but i had to write a chapter anyway. Think i'll just finish this one first, this new project is going to be an entirely new animal, and it needs the kinks worked out... anyway, you know the drill, read, review.

* * *


	5. The Boys Are Back In Town

CHAPTER FIVE BABY YEAH!

longest chapter yet!

* * *

Mal and Jayne were walking the perimeter of the landing/crashing site of the _San Antonio_. Mal was bored, Jayne was bitching.

"Mal, when I said I'd take the job I didn't mean walkin 'round in circles 'round a gorram crashed ship!" Jayne was kicking various stones and foliage, anything to alleviate the boredom of simply _walking_ in circles all day long.

"Jayne, your mouth is talking-"

"Yeah, yeah Mal, I'll look to it."

If he had been complaining less they both might have noticed the two figures slipping into the ship behind their backs. As it was they were still distracted by Jayne's annoyed grunts every few yards.

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River was reaching out with her mind, or, she was trying to. She'd recovered a little of her ability but it was hard, she had to work at it. That was better though, she couldn't shut anything out before, it was better that she couldn't read anything than have to read everything always.

It was with this thought that she picked up…something. She couldn't read it at all, even when she tried her hardest. That was strange, even 'empty' space had a feeling, this was a void, a dead area with no feeling at all.

Gathering her thoughts, she left her room and stole a gun from the weapons rack on her way out of the ship. Something wasn't right, and from being on the ship as long as she had, when something wasn't right it was a good idea to be armed.

She made her way down the ship's ramp and across the landing bay of the larger ship, upon reaching the lift she made her way down to the lower level and towards the entrance to the ship. Towards the void. Making her way down the hallway she arrived at a T-junction and turned down the hallway and, literally, ran into the last person she expected to see. She jumped backwards and pointed the gun at the girl in front of her, completely ignoring the man.

Saffron wasn't slow; her gun was already up and pointed at River, surprised to see her as well.

Hearing the commotion Asuka stepped off the lift at the end of the junction and had her own sidearm up in moments, pointed at the man.

His gun came up and pointed at River, Saffron shifted her aim to Asuka.

River and Asuka simultaneously shared their thoughts, "What are you doing here?!"

River cocked her eyebrow at Asuka, "You know her?"

Asuka tilted her head, "No, who is she?"

Kaworu cut in to explain, "We're here to help, put down the guns?"

The four exchanged looks but nobody moved. Asuka kept her aim straight on Kaworu's head, "You're a fucking angel, why shouldn't I cut you down where you stand?!"

He lowered his gun and motioned for Saffron to do the same, "Because, I love the third child as much as you do, we need to save him."

Asuka lowered her gun, as did River, who spoke to Saffron, "Why are you here?"

Saffron looked to the ground, "I…made mistakes in the past. I want…need to make up for them, make things right for what I did to everyone."

Asuka glared at the pair, "If you cross me, you're going directly out the airlock."

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After being stuck on the ground for a week and a half things were finally looking up. Johnny stepped off the lift onto the bridge to find Asuka and Rei both looking over consoles. He smiled and turned on the charm, "Well hello beautiful ladies!"

The pair looked at him and smiled, "What's up Johnny?" Rei said.

He laughed inwardly, suppressing a lewd comment. He quickly sobered up, "Repairs are done as well as can be expected. Positron array is a complete loss, but the rest of the ship is fixed, armor plates replaced and the hull breaches are patched up, thrusters are all replaced and online. Your very beautiful purple-haired friend gave me a bit of money to buy completely new lift thruster assemblies, so she's better than new. Airfoils are replaced; we can fly whenever you're ready."

Said purple-haired friend stepped onto the bridge of the ship at that moment. Rei smiled at her, and saluted, "Captain Katsuragi, the ship is yours."

Misato smiled and nodded, then turned to the pilot, "Is everybody on board?"

"Yes Ma'am."

"Take us up."

The main reactor spun up and the Magi terminal reported full systems functionality. The drive units engaged and with a cloud of dust the ship lifted off the ground. The atmospheric engines lit and the airfoils extended as the ship took to the sky.

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Fifteen minutes after the ship broke atmo, Kaworu had found his way to the bridge of the ship, there he found the two eva pilots. He was surprised at the relationship the two had. Not only was Asuka being _nice_ to Rei, Rei seemed to be the one in command. It was hard for him to wrap his mind around Asuka actually letting Rei take charge.

Misato came up behind him without his noticing and touched his shoulder, "I could kill you for what you are, but Shinji would never forgive me. When you died the first time, it nearly killed him. I don't know how or why you're back, but don't hurt him like that again, don't make him make that decision again. I won't kill you; it will be much, much worse."

The left a moment for that to sink in for him and stepped onto the bridge. She walked over to the girls, "come with me to the briefing room, wave _Serenity_ tell them to meet us there."

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Rei, Asuka, Kaworu, Andrea, Misato, Saffron, Mal, Jayne, and Zoë were sitting around the table in the middle of the room. Andrea had been invited because she was on this ship too; she was in this as much as everybody else. Misato owed her an explanation.

Rei started the briefing, "We're headed to Osiris, Shinji is being held in a secure facility on the southern continent. We'll be arriving in about seventy-two hours. The plan is this: we fly down on _Serenity_, infiltrate the facility. Keep casualties to a minimum to avoid detection. Once you're out."

Mal looked at the girl, the cold edge in her voice was damn creepifying, "Who's goin?"

Misato took over, "The team will be Asuka, Jayne, Mal, and Kaworu. Your crew will most likely be on your ship for drop-off and extraction. Saffron, Rei, Andrea, and I will be staying on the ship for obvious reasons."

Asuka smirked, "What she means to say is that Andrea is too young, she's too old, and Wondergirl is useless in a firefight."

Misato glared in Asuka's direction, "You're not exactly young anymore now are you Asuka?"

Her smirk quickly faded.

Rei took over again, "Once you've been extracted we're going to bomb the facility from orbit, any objections?"

She received none.

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Monty's waved _Serenity_ after they had left Whitefall, he left a message that while he wanted to help, he just didn't have the ability, he was deep in debt and he had to finish his run or else not be able to fuel his ship.

Mal was disappointed, but knew exactly what it was like to worry about staying in the air.

xxxxxxxxxxx

_Serenity_ launched from the _San Antonio_ before orbital insertion over Osiris. Wash was careful in piloting the ship in a mock-uncontrolled descent to simulate space debris burning up in the atmosphere. It was tricky, but stealth was important.

The ship tumbled as it slid into cooler air and Wash quickly powered up the engines and fought with the controls for stability. Leveling the ship off he relaxed, "I am a leaf on-"

Zoë cut him off before he could finish, "Don't say it husband."

Wash had a hurt look on his face, "Why not?"

"What happened last time you said it?"

"We crashed…oh."

Zoë had her hand on Wash's shoulder as he landed the ship. She was going to stay on board while the rest went on with the mission. Between herself and River, the ship would be relatively safe should somebody attack.

The landing was a little rough and Zoë felt the jolt of impact. _'Wash must be pretty nervous about this.'_

xxxxxxxxxxxx

Mal was with Asuka hiding behind a door inside the facility. The intrusion had been much easier than he had expected. The codes Asuka stole on her way out proved to be extremely useful.

Kaworu was on the other side of the hallway behind another door with Jayne. Looking outside the window in the door he saw that the hallway was empty and signaled for the first pair to move, that the hall was clear.

They proceeded down the hallway towards a lift to take them down a level to where Shinji was being held. Slipping onto the lift, the four of the descended, upon reaching the lower level they stepped off the lift to see a row of cells lining the corridor.

Checking quickly for any personnel in the corridor, the group traveled forwards in search of Shinji. This search didn't take long, however, as he was in one of the first cells.

Asuka raised her shotgun and fired a breacher charge into the locking mechanism. This had two effects: the first was that the door was blown violently off of its hinges. The second effect was that a now very awake and very startled Shinji was staring through the gaping hole where the door to his cell used to be.

The wheels in his head had just started to turn as he tried to process what the _hell_ had just happened when he saw a blur of red hair and a woman rushing into the cell, tackling him onto his cot. He recognized that blur of hair, "Hey Asuka…"

She released him from the spontaneous hug and helped him up. She handed him her sidearm, "Come on, we're getting you out of here."

xxxxxxxxxxxx

Onboard the _San Antonio_ things were rapidly turning pear shaped. Soon after entering orbit they were attacked by the Osiris Orbital Defense Fleet. A grandiose name for what amounted to a small collection of pocket patrol boats and one-man fighter craft.

That attack was expected, but Misato was sure that the small collection of ships wouldn't breach the defenses. What was _not _expected was an alliance cruiser bringing in reinforcements from the other side of the planet.

Misato turned to the rapidly piling up damage reports on the screen built into the armrest of the captain's chair. She stood up and stepped forward, "Align the ship for a full broadside attack on the cruiser, load starboard torpedo bays with Leviathan breacher torpedoes, fire when ready!" she spun around to the point defense station, "They are going to try to board us, don't let it happen. I want a wall of metal between the patrol boats and our landing bays!"

The comm light on her chair lit up, she walked back over to it and slapped the answer button, "Give me good news."

The voice on the other end of the line was warped and garbled by the damage to the internal communications lines, it was still unmistakably Rei, "-cut-of--from-un--one. Sortie--zero--positr--rifle--electric—grid."

Misato tried to comprehend what was going on when a bridge officer interrupted her thoughts.

"Ma'am, there's a huge power drain on the main reactor, Unit-00 has gone active and the eva weapons locker is reading that the type 2 positron rifle is missing from inventory."

Unit-00 was not equipped for space travel. With only two viable pilots it was never a priority to prepare it for flight. The newer production models had better targeting and mobility systems, and Unit-01 had an S2 core, making Unit-00 obsolete. Misato knew those facts, and she finally understood the message. She had to act fast, "Lock down the eva launch catapults!"

"Ma'am, the commands are being overridden, the Magi system will not accept the lockout!"

xxxxxxxxxxxx

Inside the cockpit of Unit-00 Rei was positioning the eva on the launch rack when the control panel read that the system was locking down. Moments later the commands were being over-ridden by the Magi and she felt a re-assurance from the eva. She understood now, she wasn't the girl that was so hated, she was different, she wasn't his little doll any more. _'Thank you, Naoko.'_

She crouched the unit down onto the catapult locks and fired the launch ignition system. Both eva and pilot shot down the launch tube towards destiny.

xxxxxxxxxxxx

The escape from the facility had no been clean. By the time they made it back to _Serenity_ Mal was fairly sure the entire gorram planet knew they were there. As their guns ran out of ammunition they cleared the airlock of their ship, which was already lifting off. Mal slapped the door close button when Wash's voice came over the intercom.

"Attention fellow travelers, the weather today is lightly cloudy with a chance of cannon fire. If you look out your window you can see a flight of alliance gunboats flying up to say hello!"

Mal swore and ran for the cockpit as the ship rocked from weapons fire, near misses. He made it to the cockpit in time to see Zoë pale from what she saw outside the windscreen. Mal stood next to her and saw what she saw, "_ta ma de…_"

There was a gunboat on their flight path, and it had locked its missiles onto _Serenity_. All color drained from Mal's face, and Zoë turned to him, "It was an honor si-"

The sound of an explosion drowned out the rest of her sentence as the ship in front of them exploding in a fireball of rapidly burning fuel and munitions propellant. Through the explosion flew a wedge shaped craft, the design of which Mal was intimately familiar with, "Our angels…"

The craft was a K-990 Fighter/Bomber. It was by no means a new ship, in fact it was the exact type of craft the independents used during the unification war. Painted on the nose of the twin engine ship was the silhouette of a tyrannosaurus. It sent a wave to _Serenity_, _"_Serenity_ this is Dino Lead, make for orbit, we'll plow the road for ya."_

Mal stood in stunned silence for a moment before giving the order, "Wash, get us the hell outta here."

Wash was grinning like an idiot, his life just got saved and that tended to make the day brighter, "Yes sir!" as he punched the throttle a thought crossed his mind. '_They have a t-rex on their hull, how awesome is that?'_

xxxxxxxxxxxx

The _San Antonio_ was hemorrhaging atmosphere into space, the hull was dotted with holes, but she kept fighting. On the bridge some of the crew had been knocked unconscious by exploding consoles, some were dead.

Misato had taken a blow to the head and was suffering from a concussion, but was still trying to command, trying to do whatever she could to see the way through this.

She hardly had the presence of mind to notice Andrea stumble onto the bridge and man the fire-control console, its operator having been killed by a falling support beam.

She _did _notice Saffron taking over helm, but she didn't have the energy to do it herself, and so let it happen.

xxxxxxxxxxxx

In space Rei was maneuvering the eva very poorly. It had no attitude control jets, only the breaking thrusters in the shoulder pylons. It made things difficult. She had used the Type-2 Positron rifle to take out half a dozen of the pocket patrol boats before the power cable snapped. She was free floating in space with seven minutes of power remaining when she saw the flash.

xxxxxxxxxxxx

Back on the bridge Andrea was, firing the anti ship weapons at the cruiser, it was life or death, and she wanted to have a hand in it, stop her own demise if she could. She was a poor shot, but she still manged to hit things. Most weapons had to be fired manually due to the targeting sensors being so damaged.

The surviving sensor operator opened his eyes wide in shock and turned to Misato, "Ma'am there's something odd on the scanner, its…just weird

With a stupid concussion induced smile on her face she spoke, "neat."

xxxxxxxxxxxx

The strange reading revealed itself rather quickly, half a dozen contacts snapped into existence in a flash of light.

With no warning, the ships opened gunports and let fly no less than two dozen Copperhead anti-capital missiles, all aimed for the alliance cruiser.

The cruiser, fighting to the last, threw everything it had into the missiles, but they just couldn't put up enough ammo to knock them out of the sky, and so they perished when the missiles contacted the hull.

xxxxxxxxxxxx

_Serenity _slid into the docking bay of the _San Antonio_. The first thing the crew noticed when they exited their own ship was that the larger ship they were inside of had gone through hell, and still was going through hell. Mal, Shinji, Kaworu, and Asuka had gone for the bridge, the rest of the crew stayed with serenity in case there was a breach in the landing bay.

Upon arriving on the bridge they were greeted by the sight of half a dozen Independent warships flashing into existence. He uttered his trademark phrase, "huh."


	6. I'm Back In The Saddle Again

Not a super long chapter, sorry.

* * *

Misato had been taken to the medical bay after the fight to get her head checked. The rest of the group was on the bridge, with the addition of Rei, who had been recovered, and Johnny, who had come up from the engineering area.

They were all working at various stations trying to engage the repair protocols and assess the damage to the ship. Saffron remained at the helm, somebody needed to do it, and she was already there.

Shinji was sitting in the captain's chair, trying to absorb everything that had just happened, the abrupt rescue and chaotic flight to orbit, the attack on the ship he was sitting in at that moment. Then, there was the warships flashing into existence in time to save them all from death. _'This kind of thing only happens in bad science fiction…'_

His mind had to cope someway, and so it pushed all the important things out of his mind, all the _good_ questions. He sat up, "Why am I in a room with a cowboy and a mini-Misato? Where did this ship come from? Why doesn't Rei look any older? And why-" he pointed at Kaworu "-is he here?"

Explanations were to be cut short, however, as the insistent buzzing of an incoming wave pierced the air. Mal was the closest to the communications station and so he pushed the button to bring the transmission up on the main screen.

The man on the other end of the transmission grinned madly as he saw Rei, Shinji, and Asuka, _"I thought it might be you three…"_ the man's eyes went wide, _"Mal!?"_

Mal's head snapped around to face the screen, "Eddie?"

Johnny's jaw nearly hit the floor, "Cap'n! You're alive?!"

"_It's a long story Johnny…Mal what are you doin on that ship?"_

Mal shrugged, "I figure that's a long story too."

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As it happened, Eddie had survived the destruction of the _Katsuragi_ because of a defect in the life support system. Improper wiring had caused the bridge ventilation to isolate itself, and so when the bridge became disconnected it still retained its air.

A few days later, still bleeding and barely alive, he was found by an independent patrol that was trying to hide from the alliance, he'd been with them since.

Mal shifted in his seat, "So, how is it that your ships just…uh…appeared?"

Eddie smirked through the comm, "_Well, there was this alliance research base, they had this fancy new experimental engine, don't know much about how it works, maybe if Johnny took a look he could tell you better than I could… anyway, we basically just punch in a destination and turn it on, makes our ships jump there in an instant, doesn't always work right though, takes a real gorram long time to recharge."_ He paused. _"So, what are you doin with them kids anyway?"_

Mal sat back, "well, it started like this."

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"_San Antonio_, This is Dino Lead, requesting landing clearance." Dino Lead, Lieutenant Commander Eric Johnson, had somebody he wanted to talk to, Malcolm Reynolds. His contact had told him his ship had docked here.

Rather surprisingly, a _very_ young voice answered, "_uh… Dino Lead this is San Antonio flight control, we've taken heavy damage, so uh… docking systems offline."_

Huh, he'd have to ask about the…informality and youth of the flight control officer. "I'd really like to dock, have you got _anything_ at all?"

The voice on the other end hesitated for a moment, there were sounds of discussion on the other end of the connection, "_Dino Lead, take station keeping off our port aft, if you _really_ wanna come over here you're going to have to go EVA and come in one of our personnel airlocks._

Eric keyed the microphone in his helmet, "Magnificent, see you in a bit."

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

"_Well, we really appreciate sending those fighters down, we wouldn't have made it out of atmo without the assist."_ Mal had waved Eddie's ship again, more important matters having been taken care of.

"Uh, Mal we didn't send any fighters, we only showed up because we detected the _San Antonio_, it's a rather…unique ship." Eddie was really curious as to how exactly those fighters had arrived

"_huh."_

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Mal was scratching his head from his seat on the bridge, '_Who the hell sent those fighters?'_ He didn't have to wait long for the answer to his unspoken question. The doors to the lift slid open and a man in a flight suit, holding a helmet under his arm stepped out, snapping a salute to Mal.

"Lieutenant Commander Eric Johnson, reporting in, sir." He grinned at his own mock formality and set down his helmet on the nearest console, "by the way, Monty says hi."

"How did he…how did you…?" Mal was trying to form coherent questions, he didn't manage it, fortunately Eric figure it out anyway.

"The Miranda broadwave got a lot of people thinking, a lot of people from the war got back in touch, decided to start the old movement over again. Dino Squadron got back together, and Monty found us, that load he had to deliver was ammunition for our ships." Eric leaned against the console he'd set his helmet on, "Dino Squadron was supposed to be your air support on Hera, we got recalled, and I heard what happened down there, it wasn't right. When we heard what you were planning, there was no question as to what we were going to do."

Anger flashed across Mal's face for a moment, _'they left us…no, command left us.'_ And the anger quickly faded, "I appreciate the help this time, we'd be dead without it."

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Repair crews were working around the clock to get _San Antonio_ repaired. While the ship had taken heavy damage the main support structure was still intact. After patching the holes in the hull the ship re-pressurized without incident. The weapons systems were more difficult, but eventually those were repaired as well. The missile and torpedo compliment was replenished, and one of the prototype FTL units was installed.

Misato had recovered from her injuries, mostly, and was back on the bridge. Most of the crew had offloaded onto the Independents' ships; they were more needed there, as with with activation of the Magi the systems on the _San Antonio_ could be mostly automated. All that was really needed was an engineer and bridge crew.

Misato left her daughter at the tactical console; she wasn't half bad at it. Saffron remained at helm, she wanted to repent for her sins and so the best way for that was to help out with the operation of the ship.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

The crew of _Serenity_ had started to spend most of their time on the _San Antonio_ getting to know the people they had been helping, it was because of _this_ that Mal had witnessed possibly the most horrifying thing in recent memory.

River was snickering as she walked past the door to Rei's quarters, Mal was walking with her and looked at her curiously, "what's so funny lil' albatross?"

River was saner after the incident with the eva as a result of her reduced ability as a reader, she could turn it off and it was harder to get it to turn on. However, very strong emotions and thoughts still came through loud and clear. She grinned up at Mal, "You'll see"

Soon after that he caught the sound of Rei's door wooshing open, and turned around to see 'Rei' walk out. '_huh_' he thought, '_when did Rei cut her hair so short and grow a goatee, and why is she so big'_ His mind refused to accept the reality that he was looking at Jayne.

His mind was forced to accept this a moment later when the _actual_ Rei stepped out of her quarters.Her hair was a complete _mess_ and her uniform was all manner of wrinkled, half the buttons were undone. She caught Mal and River looking at her and blushed.

Jayne had a huge smile on his face, lots of exposed teeth. Mal's face turned to abject horror as the reality sunk in, "_Aiyah,_ Jayne what the hell?"

Jayne just smiled wider, "She's really bendy"

Rei's face took on an even deeper blush as the words left Jayne's mouth.

Mal 's face was horrified, "I can't know that!"

He really was on the verge of losing his mind.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

The _Serenity_ crew had all gone back to their ship, it was the night cycle and it had been a while since anybody had got a good night's sleep.

And so Misato and Rei were alone on the bridge, Rei watching sensors while Misato herself flew the ship.

Misato had heard about what happened between Rei and Jayne, everybody had in fact. She was a little shocked. While it was true that Jayne was, well, hot, he was still Jayne. "So, how long has it been going on?"

"A few months, and, its not just…physical, he really does, you know, like me."

Misato sounded slightly embarrassed with her next question, "Does he know about you…not being entirely…uh…human?"

Rei suppressed an angry glare, "I told him, told everybody on _Serenity_, it didn't matter to them."

Misato caught on that she had upset Rei, "sorry for asking…"

Rei turned back to her station and opened her eyes wide in surprise, "There's an object approaching, its signature is blue-shifted, it's moving damn fast! Magi estimate speed at point nine cee"

"Nothing can go that fast!" Misato brought the ship about to face the object, which was going to be on them in moments, she saw an angel. The black sphere, she remembered this angel, what it could do.

She turned to Rei, "Get Andrea onto _Serenity, _Tell Johnny to get to _Blackjack_ and be ready to run, okay?"

Rei nodded and left the bridge in search of Misato's daughter.

Misato activated the intercom to Asuka and Shinji, "Wake up, you're never going to believe this; there's an angel."

Asuka rolled over to the intercom and blinked, _'angel?'_ she slapped the reply switch, "we're on our way to the cages." She turned back over, "Shinji, time to go."

He nodded

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Shinji was sitting in Unit-01, he was standing on the upper hull of the ship and rapidly firing high yield anti-matter warheads into the black disc of the angel. It was having an effect; however that effect was the angel moving in on the _San Antionio_. The disc touched the bow of the ship and started to pull it in, Shinji held onto the controls, Asuka was behind him, holding onto his shoulders, "Don't worry Shinji, we'll find a way out of this."

Shinji was unsure, but an idea occurred to him at that time. He waved Misato on the bridge, "Misato, jump the ship."

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Misato was pushing the ship's engines in reverse as hard as they would go, but it wouldn't break free. The forward landing bay was already inside of the angel, she never had time to warn _Serenity_ to run, and now her daughter was inside this monster.

She was losing all hope when Shinji came on the comm, _"Misato, jump the ship."_

What the hell, nothing to lose now anyway. She spooled the FTL and set coordinates to Persephone, and the ship jumped.

As the ship jumped, the angel exploded, freeing the bow of the ship as it jumped out.

Later, when Rei went back to the landing bay to check on the two Fireflies in the landing bay she had a shock; they were gone. She ran to the comm panel on the wall and slapped the button for the bridge, "Misato, _Serenity _and _Blackjack _are gone!"

On the bridge Misato's heart pounded, '_Andrea!'_

Rei had similar thoughts regarding Jayne.

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_Serenity_ Flashed into existence in orbit of a blue-green planet, it was alone. The ship jolted violently as it came into contact with the gravity after being in a near zero gravity environment deep in the black, as a result the crew awoke. Andrea was _already_ awake, sitting in the common room waiting for Rei to come back, so the jolt simply sent her flying to the floor.

Wash was the first to the bridge, followed soon after by Zoë and Mal, Jayne couldn't be awoken by anything short of a hull breach. Staring out at the world in front of them, they were surprised, and then kind of shocked. Wash checked the instruments on the panel in front of him, "Gravity, Air, Temperature, Weather, its all Earth-norm, _exactly_ Earth-norm."

Mal cocked his eyebrow and looked at Wash, "I didn't think any of the terraformed planets were exactly Earth-norm."

"They're not, even the core planets ain't perfect."

"So wait, that means…"

"Yeah, I think it does. Welcome to earth fellow travelers."

* * *

Oh Shi-


	7. Land of Confusion

_I won't be coming home tonight  
My generation will put it right  
We're not just making promises  
That we know we'll never keep_

_There's too many men, too many people  
Making too many problems  
And there's not much love to go round  
Can't you see this is a land of confusion?_

_Now, this is the world we live in  
And these are the hands we're given  
Use them and let's start trying  
To make it a place worth fighting for_

_-Land of Confusion_

* * *

"Well, I guess uh…take us into the world, Wash."

Wash complied with Mal's order, rotating the ship in line with their direction of orbit and firing the engines in retro burn. The ship's orbit slowed considerably and its direction of travel dropped thirty degrees, bringing it into alignment for a landing somewhere over central japan, "I wonder what we'll find down there…"

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Nerv was on high alert. After the fifth angel had broken through so many of the armor plates protecting the Geofront they were extremely vulnerable.

So when Hyuga nearly jumped out of his skin and yelled, he was taken completely seriously, "Unidentified energy signature descending from orbit, its off the charts!"

Misato, at this point in time far, far younger than the one the crew of _Serenity_ knew, paled. '_We can't survive another attack right now…' _ "Is it an angel?"

"There's no AT field yet, I cannot confirm. The magi are in agreement, we should strike first." Aoba was rapidly firing off commands into his console, desperately trying to figure out exactly what was going on.

Misato's expression hardened, "Launch an N2 missile."

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

"Uh Mal?" Wash's voice was shaky, fear was evident.

Mal picked up on that, "Problem?"

He turned in his chair to Mal, "We're being shot at, big ugly missile, makes _Serenity_ into much smaller chunks than its in right now."

"Ya know, just _once_ I'd like to go through something where I'm not getting shot at, is that too much to ask?"

"Apparently it is."

"Okay, well, drop a decoy and get away from the missile, fastly." Mal rubbed his forehead, that pesky migraine was coming back full force.

Wash turned the ship on its side and pulled back on his controls; bring the ship around at ninety degrees from its original course and away from the decoy. Pushing the throttle up, he sped the ship away from the inevitable explosion.

The missile slammed into the decoy and flew on for a few moments as the decoy embedded itself into the nosecone of the missile. Then, in a flash of light and sound, it exploded. The shockwave slammed into _Serenity, _nearly tearing her from the sky.

"We're being shot at by crazy people!!" Wash's blood was pumping, heart pounding in his chest; he fought with the controls and managed to keep the ship in the air.

"Was that…nuclear?" Zoë was completely shocked by this new development.

"We got another one!" Wash hauled the controls around and pushed the thrusters as hard as they would go. The ship spun on its axis and shot off away from the missile, unfortunately the missile was far faster than them and it as only a matter of time.

Mal put his hand on Wash's shoulder, "Give me an Ivan."

Wash nodded and grabbed the microphone, "Kaylee I need an Ivan!"

He could hear frantic activity on the other end of the line before Kaylee spoke, "It's ready wash!"

"I am a leaf on the wind…" He yanked hard on the position lever for the port thruster and spun it 180 degrees, spinning the ship on its axis and then the end of the ship started to glow as it prepared for full burn. Moments later the ship rocketed forward before Wash cut thrust. The missile was incinerated by the blast.

Andrea had been climbing through the ship, up the stairs, across the catwalks and down the hallway; she arrived in the doorway to the bridge as the third missile was fired.

Mal grabbed onto the handset and sent out a general radio call, "Listen you _feng le ta ma de hun dan_, stop shooting missiles at my gorram ship!"

Surprisingly, he got an answer_, "Identify yourself!"_

'_huh, she sounds kinda like Misato' _Mal clenched the handset in his hand, "I'm Malcom Reynolds and you're launching nuclear weapons at my boat!"

In the background the crew heard her talking to somebody else, "_Can the magi confirm it's not an angel? --okay err on the side of caution, don't call off the missile."_

Mal swore, but Andrea suddenly got an idea and burst onto the bridge. She did sound kind of like her mother, and she knew that her mom used to live on earth long ago, and the magi…'_maybe it's the same computer_!' She grabbed the handset from Mal and screamed into it, loud enough that every sensor on the bridge at Nerv would pick it up, "Voiceprint Katsuragi-tango-lima-six-six-niner-charlie, emergency system shutdown now!" '_Dear god please let this work'_

Fortunately, it did. Andrea was lucky to have been working with the original Magi on the _San Antonio_, her mother had given her a shutdown code just in case something went wrong, and fortunately it was the same code she'd used so many years before, and the system accepted it.

The transmission between _Serenity_ and the ground abruptly cut out.

Mal blinked a few times and looked down at Andrea, "How'd you get here?"

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Nerv HQ was dark, Misato had heard _her_ access code being used to take the Magi offline, the missile they had fired shutdown and splashed down over the ocean and the entire complex was now lit with emergency lighting only.

The entire bridge crew looked at her accusingly. She looked back sheepishly, "I really didn't do that…" she dropped her head and stared at the floor. '_Son of a bitch…' "_Okay, just… get it online, I'll be in my office…" she trudged off the bridge and out the door.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

"Wash take us down over where they were shooting as us from, we're gonna have a little talk with those people." Mal was caressing the grip of his gun, this really screwed his day up, and he was a tad pissed off over it. So, he was going to calmly talk to them, then use bullets for punctuation.

Wash was apprehensive, "is that a good idea Mal? Remember the part with the missiles?"

Mal shrugged, "Yeah, I do, but I don't conjure they'd nuke themselves, so bein' on top of them is the best place to be."

"Huh, that plan actually sounds smart." Jayne was being…Jayne, again.

He was silenced by a hard glance from Zoë, "so, what's the plan?"

Mal checked the safety on his gun as _Serenity_ touched down on the edge of a city with a gigantic diamond shaped object lying on the ground in the middle of it. "Well, they shot us, I aim to find out why, and, you know, shoot em back."

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The mule was zipping down most deserted streets, following directions Wash was transmitting from _Serenity, _guiding them to the origin of the radio transmission while they were in the air.

Mal, River, and Jayne were in the front of the mule, Andrea had insisted on going, and she couldn't be dissuaded. Mal figured the only way to stop her was shooting, and he didn't have the heart for it, so he let her come with instructions that she keep her head down and run away if it got ugly.

While they were driving along they spotted a series of roll-up style doors with a familiar logo painted on them. Jayne was unusually perceptive of that, "Hey Mal, ain't that the logo they got painted everywhere on Rei's boat?"

"Huh, It is at that, Albatross, pull over here" Mal jumped off the Mule in front of the doors, looking for a way of opening them.

He didn't have to wait long as the door began to retract, seemingly of its own accord. Mal stepped away and leaned against the wall next to it and pulled out his gun. Jayne was off the mule and had Vera pressed against his shoulder and ready to fire. Andrea was hiding in the mule, her head poking up over the side. River was on the ground and calmly staring at the door as it opened.

A group of three men in combat fatigues rushed out, weapons drawn, "Drop your weapon and put your hands on the ground!"

Jayne pointed Vera's laser sight at the lead soldier's forehead, "Not a gorram chance! Don't be thinking on pullin that trigger, I'll have ya dead before I go down."

As if to punctuate the point that the men had no chance, River launched herself at the man in the middle of the three, kicking him sharply in the neck, driving him to the ground, as she landed between the two men still standing she pulled two pistols from the holsters strapped to her thighs and pointed them at either man's head, she shot a smirk at Mal, who was still hiding against the wall.

Mal stepped out into the open and stood in front of the men, who were now too afraid to try firing their weapons, "You'll be wantin to drop that hardware, girl's a little touched in the head, wouldn't want to set her off ya know?"

The men dropped their weapons and started to raise their hands, it wasn't worth getting shot in the head over. However, it was something they would get pistol whipped in the head for.

River snapped both guns into the backs of the soldiers' heads knocking them to the ground and unconscious. River turned back to the group and spoke in a voice that sounded eerily like Asuka's, "A fight should be clean and elegant, without waste!"

Jayne shuddered, "That's just creepifyin"

Mal gestured at the mule, "River, wanna bring that inside? Might need it."

River nodded and skipped over to the mule, jumping gracefully up and landing in the pilot's seat. She brought the front around and gently pushed on the throttle, sliding it through the door without so much as grazing the sides. No small feat considering the mule was nearly as big as the opening.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

"_Perimeter is breached ma'am!_" A voice shot through Misato's radio, she jumped out of the chair in her office and ran to the bridge.

Arriving at the command area in the base's control room she turned to Maya, who had sent the message, "report?"

"There are intruders on the upper level; four unidentified persons are being tracked by the security cameras." Maya was scanning the information on her screen with her eyes.

"Show me"

The screen showed the image of two Caucasian men, a Caucasian looking woman, and then there was another girl who looked to be a mix of Japanese and Caucasian. She…looked kinda like Misato. '_huh_'

"…_place is just like Rei was sayin'"_

"_Oh, so there _was_ talking then."_

"_Oh come on Mal, its more than just sexin…its uh…serious!"_

The man in the coat and the man with the big gun were arguing like children, but a few of the words caught Misato as odd, _'Rei? He can't mean Ayanami...'_

The older of the two girls spoke then, _"The layout is problematic, though it bears resemblance to the _San Antonio_…"_

"_Don't feel too bad about it, mom said she used to get lost and her friend Ritsu had to find her all the time."_

Misato dropped her jaw in shock, "What the hell!?" she turned to Aoba, "Dispatch security!"

Aoba signaled for security to intercept, "I don't think they'll be successful ma'am, the older girl disarmed three of our special forces units in less than ten seconds!"

Misato rubbed her temples, "Still, we have to try, we need to find out why they know so damn much about us." '_and why the hell does she sound like she's describing _me_'_

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Andrea and _Serenity_ had been missing for three months, Misato never gave up looking.

They had finished a diagnostic of the Magi when she got a personal page to go to the records room. She met Rei inside the room, she had a hopeful look on her face.

"Misato, I think I know where they went." She turned on the projector and a security tape from Nerv-1 in Toyko-3 came up on the screen.

"…_place is just like Rei was sayin'"_

"_Oh, so there _was_ talking then."_

"_Oh come on Mal, its more than just sexin…its uh…serious!"_

"_The layout is problematic, though it bears resemblance to the _San Antonio_…"_

"_Don't feel too bad about it, mom said she used to get lost and her friend Ritsu had to find her all the time."_

Misato just stared open mouthed at the screen, her mind worked out exactly what was going to happen if they had ended up at Nerv headquarters, "We have to go back, get them out…"

"I know."

* * *

I failed to mention this in the last chapter but "cee" or _c_ refers to the speed of light in vacuum.

Blue shift is the shortening of the wavelength of light. Blue has a shorter wavelength than red, so if an object is approaching at a high enough speed the light will visibly 'compress' into a blue light wavelength, if it is moving away fast enough it will Red shift, which is the light wavelength 'stretching'

dylanredefined: That was to be expected, ya?


	8. Land of Confusion Part II

Longest chapter EVER in one of my stories. Maybe i'll keep it up like this.

* * *

"Mom?" Andrea was, for lack of a better word, shaken. In front of her was the woman she'd known as her mother, at least, she _would_ be her mother, but at this point in time was simply Misato Katsuragi: Operations Director of Nerv. The unsettling part was the fact that there was a Five-seveN in Misato's hand, and it was pointed at Andrea's head.

To her credit, Misato kept cool even after being called "mom" by a girl who…looked young enough to be one of the pilots... "Who are you, what's your name?" '_She does look kinda like…no, I'm not going there, I can't afford that distraction.'_

She looked to Mal and to River, and then to Jayne, her eyes pleading for a way out. Nobody made a move; they couldn't make a move, not without putting Andrea in mortal danger. This Misato was an unknown quantity, and they'd all seen what the Misato _they_ knew could be like.

Andrea straightened up her posture and gathered up all her courage. '_Here goes nothing…' _ She looked Misato in the eye, her face expressionless, "Andrea Erin Katsuragi, ma'am."

Misato stared at the girl slack jawed. _'No way is she related to me, no way.'_ She dropped the gun a few inches, "Explain, now."

Andrea sighed and tried to relax her posture, "Andrea Erin Katsuragi, born July 2510 to Misato Katsuragi and Eric Reynolds, currently thirteen years of age, weight, one-hundred pounds, height five feet one inch, blood-type AO."

"You're lying. If you're going to make up a lie at least make it believable, you're trying to tell me you were born in the future? Not possible." She dropped her gun a little more, unconsciously.

River and Jayne reacted simultaneously, Jayne brought Vera to his shoulder and lined up a shot on Misato's head, Rivers foot snapped out and kicked the gun from Jayne's grip. River shot him an incredulous look and whispered harshly, "Jayne, if you kill her mother in the past she'll never be born!"

To his credit, Jayne picked up on the concept rather quickly. '_I shoulda been smarter than that... changin the past changes the future, got it.'_

Misato dove for cover the second she saw the gun raise up, and was shocked to see the other girl kick the gun from the man's hands.

Taking advantage of the distraction, Mal pulled a communicator from his pocket and gave a quick order, "Wash, get _Serenity_ off the ground and out of atmo _right now_!"

"_Running away, yes sir."_ Wash sounded disappointed.

Misato raised her gun to shoot at Mal when Andrea pulled a gun out of her pocket, she whispered, "sorry mom" and pulled the trigger. Two microfilament wires shot from the end, clips attached to Misato's uniform, and high voltage electrical charges flowed down the wires, causing her to spasm wildly and drop her gun, soon afterwards she lost consciousness.

Mal blinked, "Well then…uh, let's keep goin."

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River had insisted on going alone, and it wasn't as if any of them could stop her, so they hid as she made her way through the complex network of vent tunnels before finally finding her destination. A vent cover popped off from the ceiling and fell to the ground. River dropped out of the vent onto her feet, right in the middle of Gendo Ikari's office.

The man was, to say the least, surprised at her entrance, and in fact he was reaching for his gun when she spoke, "It's not going to work, you know." She was reading him, it wasn't hard to find what she needed, it was constantly running through his mind, he was mentally _screaming_ it.

Gendo was intrigued. The situation would be controlled soon anyway, so he indulged this intruder, "What is that?"

She smiled in that creepifying way she has a knack for, "The catalyst will never be part of the reaction. You can't get her back this way, the old men are using you, don't you know?" _'His thoughts are so…loud; this is what he wants more than life? Love does make people do stupid things…'_

Gendo's amused look left his face, "What are you talking about?!"

River stepped closer to his desk, the tone of her voice and the look on her face would have made a lesser man scared out of his wits. Gendo was not that kind of man. She smiled darkly, "It is the trigger, it instigates the process, but it can never be _part_ of the process, you need to do it a different way."

Gendo's face went slack. _'The old men lied…They knew... It makes sense…I should have known they would lie, they are the ones that put her in there; they knew she'd be taken!'_ He put on his best poker face, "And what if I believed you?"

She leaned in close to his face, "You'd change. Make a positive difference. Make it up to the boy, she'd never forgive you if you didn't, you know that, you've always known that. So why?"

She was breaking through his mental walls. He hid his face behind his hands, to hide the anguished expression, "It… wasn't important. I…she needed to come back, she didn't deserve it. Even if she hated me, she'd still be back, and that would be enough." He paused and took off his glasses, and looked up to the girl standing in his office, "So, if you're right, what next?"

She smiled darkly and turned around to walk out of his office; she stopped at the door and turned her head back to face him, "Revenge. Think on it before you decide."

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Misato woke up in a heap on the floor of one of the corridors of Nerv. She rubbed her side, "Feel like I've been hit by a damn train…" Her short term memory was shot; she had no idea what she was doing, or why she'd have been unconscious on the floor. She made her way to the bridge, best place to find out, at least she thought so.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

River had rejoined the group and was being cryptic, "He understands, doesn't know it yet but he's changing things, changing everything."

Mal sighed, "Just when you were startin to talk sense, goin back to this eh lil' albatross?"

She grinned impishly at him, "It's good to change it up, it keeps the mind sharp."

The group stopped abruptly when they ran into a heavily armed patrol of Nerv Section Two agents. They found themselves staring down the barrels of half a dozen M16 assault rifles, "Uh…hi" one thought was on Mal's mind _'I'm gonna get shot again, damn.'_

One of the agents pressed clicked the transmit button on his radio, "Sir, do I have a kill order?"

There was a hesitation on the other end of the line before Gendo's tinny radio distorted voice came through, "_No, stand down. Direct them to cage five."_

"Uh, sir?"

"_Was I unclear?"_

"N..no, sir."

The agent turned to the group, "If you'll follow us…"

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Gendo was standing in cage five, looking up at Unit-01, "What should I do,Yui? What she said makes sense… I'm not used to being so… I was completely confidant in the scenario, now, I'm not so sure." He looked down at the catwalk and adjusted his glasses, and turned back up to look the unit in the face, "Could you ever forgive me for what I've done, Yui?"

"She might." He turned away as he caught River's voice. She and her group had arrived in the cages. Because he had looked away, he hadn't noticed the faint momentary glow in the eyes of the eva.

Jayne looked at the purple behemoth as he stepped onto the catwalk, "Hey isn't that Rei's…" he made an 'oof' sound as Mal elbowed him in the gut to silence him. He shot Mal an evil look but didn't react in any other way. Mal was the guy paying him afterall.

Gendo looked at River and nodded his head, a slight and genuine smile on his face, "I've decided."

River smiled back, "I knew you'd make the right decision."

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Asuka stepped off the aircraft carrier and onto the ramp leading to the dock. Due to the abnormal circumstances at Nerv HQ recently she had been unescorted by Misato, and the portable power supply had not been installed on the ship. In spite of that, she successfully combated the angel in the water. The plan had been drawn up by the ships captain to use the eva's AT field to breach the angel's and use an anti-ship torpedo as a handheld weapon. The plan worked, though there was extensive damage to the unit's right hand and forearm.

A Nerv officer was at the docks to meet her, as her guardian, Kaji, had been unable to stay with her the entire trip, as an urgent message had required his presence elsewhere.

The officer was shifting uncomfortably from foot to foot, technically speaking, the pilot outranked him, and if that wasn't enough, piloting that giant mecha was more than enough to intimidate him, "Ma'am, it's a little unorthodox but I have orders to inform you that you'll be piloting the Evangelion Unit to the nearest launch catapult for entrance to the base."

Asuka couldn't have been happier; any chance to show how amazing she was with Unit-02 was fine by her.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Months passed for the crew of _Serenity_ In those month's various angel battles had been fought, always winning. Gendo _had_ decided to change the course of events, but it wasn't yet time, things had to play out for a little longer before he could make his move against SEELE, though he _did_ make an extra effort to allow Rei to develop personality, and to give Shinji much needed encouragement.

Then the shit hit the figurative fan. The angel Arael showed up out of order, the scrolls had clearly predicted the order of attacks, and this was the curveball from hell.

"Target is outside of our weapons range! The evas can't damage the angel!" Maya called out from her console. It was true. Units-00 and 02 had launched to intercept the target, with Unit-01 in reserve.

Gendo was staring wide eyed at the screen. They hadn't recovered the lance yet, they had nothing to attack it with. River was by his side and was feeling the fear rolling off of him.

She'd been with him strangely often since the decision had been made those months ago, it made Mal nervous, but he knew the girl could take care of herself. The staff of Nerv had noticed it too, but was generally too afraid of the man to question it.

He started to lose all hope when the angel fired a beam of light at Asuka as she tried to fire the Eva-mounted positron cannon. As the light contacted her unit she started to scream in pain and her shot went wild, missing the target completely.

"Mental contamination in the pilot, it's ripping into her mind!" Aoba yelled out over the alarms ringing in the room.

Gendo looked over to River and received a nod from her. Before anybody could react to the angel's attack he launched himself out of his chair and yelled out an order, "Launch unit-01. Shinji, recover the pilot at all costs!" _'This changes now!'_

Shinji acknowledged the order as the bridge crew fired the launch catapult; the platform rocketed upwards before moving into one of the horizontal launch tubes. "The pilot is disengaging the safety locks!"

Misato's attention snapped to the screen as the man announced this new development, "What the hell is he thinking?!" She soon figured out exactly what he was thinking a few moments later when the catapult reached its destination and stopped. The eva, however, did _not_ stop. It flew off the catapult at one-hundred thirty miles per hour on a direct path towards unit-02. Tackling it out of the line of fire, he dragged the eva into a recovery lift.

He radioed the control room, "Pilot recovered… We're on the lift." He let out a sigh, _'Nothing ever goes right…'_

The lift descended.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

"All three units have been recovered, though we have no way of combating the target, we seem to be safe for the time being. We have no plans as to how we're going to combat this angel at this time." Misato finished her report and stared blankly across the table in the briefing room.

Asuka sat with a glazed expression on her face, she was non responsive to people trying to talk to her, but she would go where people told her to, which was how she ended up at the table in the first place.

Rei was as per usual, expressionless, but there was…something… about her, she was a little different than usual. If one was extremely perceptive they would see concern in her features.

Shinji was mentally beating himself for not being able to save Asuka sooner, although the blow was softened when his father, of all people, congratulated him on doing as good as job as was possible given the circumstances.

River was contemplative as Mal entered the room; Gendo had summoned him and said that it was urgent. He wasn't particularly inclined to trust, or even like the man, but River seemed to have taken to him in some way, so he came for her sake if nothing else.

Mal stood inside of the doorway, leaning against the wall, as Gendo addressed the group, "I have… a plan. The only weapon with the range and power to attack this angel is the Lance of Longinus; unfortunately it is currently…unavailable. And, that's why I asked Malcom Reynolds here-"he turned to Mal, "-I'd… like to" he stopped, and rethought his words, "I request your help in this matter, your ship is the only chance we have for a quick recovery of the object. Will you help us?"

Mal was extremely inclined to tell the man where to stick it, but for River's sake he considered it. He looked to her for her own approval; she nodded at him and smiled. He looked at Gendo, right into his eyes for any sign of deception, "Alright. What's the plan?"

Gendo let out a sigh of relief, "First…"

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

_Serenity_ was bobbing up and down in the air over the ocean, the engines screaming in protest of the strain they were being put under. Wash opened up a com to the cargo hold, "This thing is uh…big and_ Serenity_ doesn't like it, too heavy."

Mal's voice replied, "_It's almost up, we can leave then, quicker we get back quicker we get rid of it."_

"Well, in the mean time I'll try not to kill us all in a fiery crash."

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Mal was in the cargo bay, standing over the bottom hatch as the thick cable of the winch was lowered down and the heavy grappling claw on the end of it was clenched around the gigantic red spear.

Jayne looked down the hole and voiced his thoughts on the object, "Hey Mal, ain't that the big spear thingy that stuck that reaver ship on Universe's moon?"

Mal raised his eyebrows, "It does have a resemblance doesn't it."

Standing to the side, supervising the operation was Gendo. He was contemplating what he'd just heard. '_They recognize it, curious.'_

Any disbelief the man had about their origins was obliterated once he stepped onto the ship for this journey, technology like this didn't exist, and even SEELE didn't have access to this kind of technology. And there was the entry plug strapped down in the side of the cargo bay; the same entry plug that was currently at Nerv being assembled. He walked over to the men, "You said you've seen this before?"

Zoë, having been watching from the side answered for the men, "Five years ago, from our perspective, we uncovered a government plot, related to your robots in fact. We were trying to broadcast a message exposing it when we were chased down on a moon. We nearly were killed by a reaver ship when that spear came through the reinforced concrete roof of the hanger, destroyed their ship outright."

Any further questions of Gendo's were cut off as the lance was finally locked onto clamps on the bottom of the ship, clamps that were installed for this specific purpose.

The ship lazily started to fly towards Japan, the incredible weight slowing the ship considerably, but still the fastest way of getting the lance to where it was needed.

During the trip Gendo had ample time to reflect on what it meant that the evas were still being used in the future. But who could be piloting them, and what did that mean? Were the angels going to attack again?

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

"Asuka will be piloting this mission." Misato said as they prepared for the delivery of the lance.

Asuka, finally, spoke, "Why me? I'm…just a failure"

Misato sighed. She needed to give Asuka a success, she knew the girl was fragile, without a win, she would just fall apart. She smiled at the girl, "Well, we need our best pilot don't we? You're going to pilot this mission, you're going to win, and that's an order."

Asuka just stared at the floor, "I can't"

Misato took on an angry tone, "I guess this means that we're going to have to have Rei do it then." She was trying to appeal to Asuka's ego, if that didn't work there wasn't much chance anything would.

Asuka's face snapped up in an angry glare, "Wondergirl isn't taking this over; I'll do it and show you _all_ how it's done!"

Misato smiled. Victory. She handed a booklet to Asuka, "This is the plan, the weapon arrives in fifteen minutes, you deploy in ten, be ready."

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Eva unit-02 was standing on the surface looking to the sky as _Serenity_ came into view. She was a little surprised at the way the ship looked, she hadn't seen it before, and it looked totally strange carrying something so much bigger than itself.

She didn't have much time to think about it as the ship released the clamps, as the weight dropped off the ship bounced upwards before the pilot reduced the power to the engines and leveled off. As the lance descended her Eva caught it expertly, and moments later that same light slammed into her Eva.

The angel was surprised this time; it wasn't breaking her as it had before. Instead, Asuka was pissed off, and hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, "You…like that….huh? Maybe…you can see…what I'm going to…do to you, huh!?" The Eva moved forwards, struggling as if fighting itself as it moved. "Think…you have…the right?! You can just…make…yourself…at home?!" her expression turned dark, frightening, nearly demonic. The Eva continued to struggle forwards, "I…got a message…for ya…" The eva stopped moving, its facial armor split open to reveal four glowing eyes, its arm tensed up and drew back, ready to fly, "Fuck you!"

She threw the lance with everything she had, it broke the sound barrier as it left her hand, sailing true and firing completely threw the angel, tearing off its wing and sending it crashing down towards the planet, the lance continued on towards the moon.

As the angel fell, Asuka's rage took over, she sprinted the eva through the edge of the city and towards where the angel was falling.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

On _Serenity_ Mal and Gendo were on the bridge with Wash, looking at the fight, listening to Asuka's voice being broadcast from the eva, watched as the lance flew from its hand, watched as it ran in animalistic rage towards the falling angel. They watched as the power cable snapped, watched as the eva reached its target.

"I'm gonna lose my gorram lunch…" Mal was staring at the scene, disgusted. He watched as the eva began to _eat_ the angel

Gendo looked at the scene as well, his eyes wide, "What have we created?"

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Johnny had been digging into the guts of his ship for months. He had snapped back into reality around Jupiter, and had shut down most of his ship to conserve fuel, running only life support, which was mostly taken care of by the solar panels. He'd been eating protein bars for the last few weeks since the real food had run out.

He had been trying to re-create a rudimentary version of the FTL drive the alliance had developed, and he was pretty sure he almost had it down.

Johnny could take a list of specs and turn it into a practical application, he prided himself on that, but this FTL was just crazy, it took far longer than he'd have liked, but he finally had finished it.

He'd picked up _Serenity_'s pulse beacon a few days after ending up in orbit, and had been planning his jump to take him there; he wasn't sure how long it would function for, so he figured getting to the other ship was his best chance.

He plugged the module into the engine and was pleased to hear a soft humming. He ran back through the ship to the cockpit, intent on making the jump in case it decided to give out on him. He slid into the chair and punched in coordinates for _Serenity_'s pulse beacon, matching current velocity, and activated the FTL drive. The main drive on _Blackjack_ spun up as if for full burn, then dumped the energy into the newly crafted FTL, moments later the ship flashed into existence inside the atmosphere, two miles off the port side of _Serenity_. He stared at the controls for a second and set the autopilot to hover, "Cool." Then he caught sight of Unit-02 _eating_ the angel, "Scary."

* * *

Just thought to let people in on where Johnny was, good yes?

As for the matching of velocity, think of it like this.

how reasonable is it that you go from one place to another, instantly

if your realspace speed doesn't change, you'd be going an entire different speed than the planet, so if i jumped from jupiter to earth without correcting for earth's orbital speed, i'd either quickly find myself outside of earth's atmosphere as it ran away from me, or quickly find myself as part of it's surface.

anyway, hope you enjoyed.


	9. We're Not Gonna Take It

longest chapter EVER.

* * *

"…and the data confirms that unit-02 did not go berserk." Ritsuko finished her report in front of Gendo and a group of people from _Serenity_; Mal, Wash, and River, as well as Johnny, who had witnessed the end of the fight.

"So, you're saying she did that on her own?" Johnny was, to say the least, freaked out. This was _not_ the Asuka he knew.

"That is correct Mr. Nagato." Ritsuko sounded annoyed. '_Why the hell did he invite these people? Who the hell _are_ these people anyway?'_

"So, you mean as to tell us that it was the girl's idea to make lunch outta that thing?" Mal had a disgusted look on his face; this whole situation was too damn creepifyin for him.

"So, do you know _why_ she went all crazy? We've worked with her-" Wash started, but was shut up quickly by a hard glare from River, her expression conveying 'shut the hell up' without words.

Gendo propped his face up on his hands, "This changes things, the scenario won't work now… good." He knew it was impossible anyway, but he didn't want to reveal that particular reason yet.

xxxxxx

"_I have the package, just like you asked" Kaji had that seemingly constant grin on his face as he handed the case to Gendo._

_He took the case and opened it, looking at the embryo inside, "Good work." He contemplated the object for a moment before he decided, "Destroy it"_

_Kaji looked at him like he'd lost his mind, but if that's what was needed, he'd do it. He wanted to find the truth, and getting on Gendo's good side was as good a way as any. What he didn't know was that the older man knew exactly who he was working for, all the parties involved. Recent developments made him inclined to indulge the man._

"_Also, here" He threw the younger man an access card. "You might want to go…to the basement, to find the…incinerator. Anything else you might see is classified, understood?"_

_Kaji nodded, "Understood."_

xxxxxx

"We need your help to get _Serenity_ and _Blackjack_ back... My daughter is with them." Misato was out of options; she had jumped to the Independent fleet and waved the lead ship, Eddie's ship.

The voice on the other end of the line was surprised, _"Johnny's gone too?"_

"Yes, I can't give you all the details, you wouldn't believe them anyway. We need a full complement of crew, and all the fighters and bombers we can fit into the ship. We're retrofitting the empty cages right now into their original fighter launch bay configurations. We'll be able to hold a full squadron by the time the retrofit is completed. I know I'm asking a lot of your, and I promise you that if…no, when we recover our ships we'll help you in your revolution, you'll have our full support."

Eddie smiled disarmingly at Misato, "_Don't worry much about that, you've got our support. Malcolm Reynolds is a hero and Johnny is like family, you've got anything you need."_

"Thank you, so very much." Misato turned in her chair to Rei, who was at the operations station, "Prepare to take on crew, we might just have a shot at this."

Rei smiled, "I know we can do it, nothin in the 'verse is gonna stop me."

Misato cocked her eyebrow in amusement, "Your vocabulary is really taking on some of the local color, have you noticed that?"

Rei shrugged, "Blame Jayne"

Misato tried to suppress an involuntary shudder, "There are some things…I really, really, really don't need to think about, you and…Jayne…is one of them."

Asuka turned from her station, Shinji by her side. After recovering him she completely refused to let him out of her sight. He wasn't entirely averse to that idea. She grinned, "I dunno, I think it's kinda cute."

Misato dropped her face into her palm, "_aiya tyen ah"_

Rei smirked, "What was that about local color?"

xxxxxx

The angels had stopped coming. There was no explanation for it, but it had been seven months, and no further attacks. Asuka was, for lack of any better explanation, normal, she was herself. There seemed to have been no ill effects from her berserker rage incident, and Doctor Akagi was at a loss to explain why that was.

Doctor Akagi was, in Simon's opinion, brilliant. She was, however, very troubled, he didn't know why that was, but he'd been spending time with her all the same, learning more about her, she learned more about him, about the differences in medicine between their two times.

Simon decided to drop a bombshell, he really wanted more information on a specific someone and throwing out information that he _shouldn't _ know seemed like it might throw the good Doctor Akagi off guard, "So, I noticed Miss Ayanami isn't human, not all the way at least. Can you shed some light on that?"

Ritsuko's coffee ejected from her mouth across the room at high speed, "How the hell can you know that!?"

Simon shrugged nonchalantly, "DNA profile, didn't entirely match human, asked her about it but…she didn't seem entirely forthcoming with information, and there's that time when she stopped those bullets in mid air, it was really quite exciting.

"You illegally obtained DNA samples from an eva pilot and then questioned them about the results? I could have you arrested! You'd never see the light of day again!" she was _furious_. _'How dare he-'_

Her thoughts were interrupted as he spoke again, "Illegally? No, she was my patient, I needed a blood sample, and well the machine spit out some really interesting information. That girl really is something else, don't you agree?"

Ritsuko knew this was going to be one of those days.

xxxxxx

Andrea was upset, she'd been trying to get Misato to talk to her since they'd arrived and the older woman always had some excuse to evade any conversation. She tried not to let it get to her, after all _this_ Misato wasn't her mother…yet. And it made sense that she'd make the older woman feel uncomfortable.

She sighed as Misato again evaded her. She decided that, since she'd got to know the girl so well on the _San Antonio_ that maybe she could talk to Rei, something to take her mind off the problems plaguing her.

Seeing the older girl step off the elevator she was standing near, she approached. She waved and smiled, "Hey Rei!"

The girl just turned her head and stared with an expression completely devoid of emotion or feeling, "what?"

Andrea blinked, "Er, well, we're kinda...uh, well, friends, where I come from…so, I was hoping we could…talk, or do something, I don't know, but its just so…boring, I need to get my mind off things."

Rei's face twitched almost imperceptibly '_Friends…' _She tried to return the smile, "That is…acceptable."

Andrea grinned, "Great!"

xxxxxx

Kozo Fuyutski stood on the raised platform in the command center, looking down at the staff working below him. He was reflecting internally about the things that had happened in the previous months. _'Gendo has changed, drastically. Nothing is happening as predicted; the old men are not going to stand for this. I hope you know what you're doing Ikari.'_

xxxxx

Gendo _did_ in fact know what he was doing. He was breaking into the door at the bunker the 'old men' of SEELE were holed up in. Breaking through the locking mechanisms on the door he made his descent into the complex, followed by Kaji. The man wanted the truth, soon he'd have all the truth he could handle.

"What are you doing here Ikari!?" Chairman Keel demanded. The man was furious that Gendo would dare show his face here.

Gendo shook his head sadly, "I haven't been worthy of her name for years, but… I can finally see the error of my ways, of your ways too." He smiled darkly as Kaji stepped next to him, facing the 'old men' of SEELE.

"And what are you planning then?" another of the men asked.

Gendo reached into his pocket and drew his pistol, Kaji not far behind him did the same. Gendo slid his glasses up with his finger and smirked, "Vengeance."

Keel laughed, "It's too late the attack has already begun."

Kaji stared at the man and finally spoke, "It's never too late, chairman." Gendo nodded his agreement, and both men pulled their triggers.

xxxxxx

"Cameras are going down all over the city, we're under attack!" Hyuga was panicked.

Fuyutski looked down at the man, "An angel?"

The younger man shook his head, "No, JSSDF forces are breaching the base, they're killing everyone!"

The grey haired sub-commander put his hand to his head, "So, it's time then." He turned to River, who was sitting where Gendo normally would have sat, "You knew this was coming didn't you, that's why you were so interested in the commander?"

River nodded her head, "Things had to be different or everything would end the same way, it couldn't happen that way again, we have to set things right."

The man nodded and turned back to the bridge personnel, "Deploy Evangelions, get the defense systems online, mobilize our security forces. We can't let them take this facility!"

xxxxxx

The entire complex shook as an N2 mine destroyed the roof of the geofront, and along with it the entire city of Tokyo-3. Andrea and Rei crashed to the floor, and the younger girl scrambled to get her balance and get back to her feet, "What was that?!"

Unfortunately she'd get no answer; Rei was out cold from a rather nasty looking head wound. "Shit."

xxxxxx

Misato had grabbed Shinji and Asuka from her apartment and was dodging roadblocks and military personnel as she tried to make it to the emergency lift to the cages. If she could make it to the cages, if she could get the children to their evas, they might just have a chance.

The car shuddered violently as the shockwave from an N2 explosion threatened to knock the car completely off the road. She had nearly lost all hope; the elevator was surely destroyed along with the rest of the city. But, then, she saw a sight that would make the entire day seem better. She looked to the sky, "Thank god for that…"

xxxxxx

"Mal! You need to take a look at this!" Wash yelled down the hallway, and moments later Mal's head popped up out of his bunk.

"What?"

"There's so much radio chatter I can't make sense of it all, but what I can make out is that those Nerv people are about to get their asses kicked by government troops." Wash was a little unsettled by what he'd discovered, Mal failed to have a reaction.

"So…?"

"Guess where River is."

Realization flashed across Mal's face, "Oh. Shit."

"So, we're being heroes then?"

"It looks to be that, take us up Wash" Mal reached up to the mic over his head, "So, It seems that our new friend got themselves into a bit of a situation-" He fell to the deck as the ship bounced around in the air from an exploding N2 mine, he brought himself back to his feet and clicked on the handset again, "-as I said, they got themselves into a bit of a situation, and River-girl is with em, so we're gonna go get her out."

Wash noticed a blue smudge on the ground in front of them and swirled the ship around to look at it from the front, it was a Renault Alpine, "So Mal, recognize the ride? We're saving her right?"

Mal got up to walk towards the cargo hold, "that we are Wash. that we are."

xxxxxx

Misato was standing on the bridge as the ship prepared for the attempt at jumping backwards in time to get their friends back. She looked to Rei, "Are we ready?"

Rei was manning the FTL control station, she had the best scientific mind of the remaining crew, so she had the best chance of making it work, "As ready as we can be."

Sitting down in her seat she called out the order, "Jump the ship."

Rei called out the countdown, "Drive spooling, power levels reaching critical. Coordinates confirmed. Three, two, one… Jumping!"

As the FTL drive activated, Kaworu's eyes glowed for the briefest of moments, and then the ship was gone.

xxxxxx

"So, what's the plan then?" Mal was standing in the cargo bay next to Misato's extremely beat up car. The car itself was only present because it was simpler to perform a modified barn-swallow than to actually stop to get out of the car.

Misato rubbed the back of her head. She wasn't entirely comfortable being on the ship with these people. She'd only restrained herself from getting a little revenge for the taser incident because she'd been ordered not to; though disobeying that particular order seemed almost worth it at times. "If we get the pilots to the evas we'll actually have a chance at fighting them off. Getting into headquarters is going to be a problem however; the anti aircraft is going to pound this ship into oblivion. If that doesn't happen then we're going to need to move on foot into the base and make our way to the cages, it's insane to try."

Jayne looked at the children and noticed a very special blue-head was missing, "Hey Misato, where'd Rei go?"

Misato looked up at him '_why would he care?_' "She's on base."

Jayne's eyes went wide and he turned quickly to Mal, "Lets do insane Mal, I gotta get her outta there."

Mal looked at him curiously, "Jayne, she isn't your Rei…"

"Maybe not yet Mal, but she dies and I'm never gonna get mine back!" Jayne's face was red. _'Why doesn't he get it.'_

Mal was shocked, "Jayne, didn't expect you to be uh…well smart enough to figure that out, when did this happen?"

Jayne shrugged, "You weren't payin me to be smart."

Mal nodded, "Well, lets try some insane, it is what we're known for." He reached over to the door panel and activated the intercom, "Kaylee, _Serenity_'s about to get shot at a lot, I need you to keep her in the air, okay?"

Kaylee's voice on the other end sounded scared, "_Yes cap'n"_

He pushed another button, "Wash, take us in, try not to get us all killed."

Wash had an audible grin in his voice, "_Not a problem sir, I am a leaf o-"_

His voice was cut off by a loud slapping sound coming from the other end of the line, followed by a female voice, "_Don't say it, husband."_

Misato dropped her head onto the roof of her car, _'We are so boned.'_

xxxxxx

_Serenity_ slammed into earth with bone jarring force. She was still intact, but the impact had stalled the drive when the safety fuel cutoffs engaged. The ship had slid some distance before stopping near one of the entryways.

The ramp groaned in protest and then dropped completely when the power failed and the hydraulics let go.

The heavily armed and armored crew of _Serenity,_ plus three, charged down the ramp. Even Simon and Kaylee were armed. Simon was not about to stand by when he could do something to save his sister, and nothing was going to stop him. Kaylee wasn't going to let Simon go it alone, either.

Jayne led the charge, and upon entering the facility they were set upon by JSSDF troops. Jayne was not going to let this stop him, he had a mission, and he wasn't going to fail. So he stood up as the others took cover and let Vera sing.

The troops didn't have a chance. High velocity high caliber ammunition perforated the entire group faster than any of them could return fire. Ignoring the others, Jayne made a mad rush through the hallways, one thing on his mind: find Rei.

Mal stared blankly after the man and then turned back to the group, "Wash, Zoë, go with Misato, get those kids to their robots. Myself, Simon, and Kaylee will make a push for the control room, go!"

xxxxxx

"Why aren't they just bombing us into oblivion?" Maya asked, her voice laced with fear.

"We're sitting on top of the original Magi, they need them so they're going to have to go about it the old fashioned way!" Hyuga's voice was agitated as he fired more rounds over the console into the troops storming the lower entryways.

River was with them, she was firing over the console with her own sidearm, but even she wasn't good enough to take out all of them, "This bites."

The other three people present stared at her, she shrugged, "I'm not always cryptic and spooky."

Suddenly, the return fire stopped as bullets flew in from the open doorway, peppering the assaulting troops from their undefended flank.

As River again looked over the console she saw a tall handsome man in a long brown coat, he was accompanied by her brother and the ship's engineer. Mal called up to her, "Hay albatross, look's like we're just in time, what do you figure that makes us?" He grinned.

She returned the grin and imitated Zoë's voice, "Big damn heroes, sir!"

"Ain't we just?"

xxxxxx

"Sorry kid, I got orders, nobody leaves here alive, no offense, but you're just another target.." A man in a JSSDF uniform had a gun pointed at Andrea's head.

To her credit she was staring him down with her fear hidden behind a hard expression, "Whatever helps you sleep better _hun dan_."

The man's finger squeezed tight on the trigger and she closed her eyes… and then there was the sound of two gunshots. Andrea waited for oblivion. Finding that she was still alive she opened her eyes; the man was on the ground bleeding where his arm was severed at the shoulder.

Vera packed a punch, was especially hard on joints. Jayne looked down at the man with a sneer on his face and pointed Vera at his head, "None taken." and pulled the trigger.

Andrea stared in shock at the man's execution before gathering herself, "Jayne, Rei's hurt."

Jayne dropped Vera to the floor unceremoniously and dropped to Rei's side, picking her up off the ground and handing the shotgun strapped to his back to Andrea with his free hand.

She reluctantly took the gun, and picked up Vera, which she slung across her back. There was no way in hell she'd be able to fire it, that was simply an insane proposition, but it was not something she'd want to get shot with, and if somebody picked it up that was a real possibility. Her attention returned to the Remington Nine-Ninety automatic shotgun in her hands, "I've never shot anybody…"

Jayne gave her a hard look that left no room for argument, "You're gonna to have to learn fast girl, no way I can shoot that gun with this girl on my shoulder, so you listen close. Ain't none of these bastards gonna give you a second thought, gonna shoot your legs out from under you before they finish the job, so you shoot first. Don't hesitate, they sure as hell won't."

Andrea protested anyway, "What if I can't aim the gun right…"

Jayne shrugged his free shoulder and pulled a pistol off his hip, "Well, the recoil's a bitch so you keep it pressed tight against your shoulder 'less you wanna shatter bones, and if you can't get it on the first shot… Well just spray and pray, they call it a room-broom for a reason."

Andrea nodded and gripped the shotgun like a man overboard clings to a life-ring. Keeping it tight against her shoulder she and Jayne turned a corner and were faced with a half dozen JSSDF soldiers shooting at Nerv personal holed up in a break room. Reacting without thinking she squeezed the trigger and dumped eight shells in four seconds into the group, the recoil knocking her from her feet and onto the floor, the last two shots went wild and slammed into the ceiling.

Jayne grabbed her by the arm and dragged her past the bleeding men and into the break room just as more soldiers replaced the ones that had just been taken out. He looked down at the bruised and battered girl; the recoil really had done a number on her, "_aiya…"_

xxxxxx

"Shinji, Asuka, we're counting on you." The two pilots stood before Misato as they prepared to enter their eva units. Misato smiled at them reassuringly, "There's still power, so protect your cable. You should make short work of the assaulting troops. But if something goes wrong, I want you to run, get as far away from here as you can."

The two nodded and Asuka spoke, "We won't let you down Misato. We can do this, you've got the number one and number two pilots on this after all" She grinned and said something Misato never expected to hear, "With Shinji on my side, we can't lose."

Shinji quickly covered his surprised expression and nodded; they both entered their plugs and began the activation for their evas.

Once out of earshot Zoë turned to Misato, "Can they really do this?"

"Do you want my tactical appraisal or my gut feeling?"

Wash looked at her and spoke before Zoë, "Maybe both?"

She nodded, "Tactically, they don't have a chance. N2 weapons will eventually break through their defenses, and if not then the cables can easily be destroyed, leaving them with only 5 minutes of battery time before their units shut down, and the JSSDF can keep on coming."

Zoë looked at her strangely, "And, your gut feeling?"

Misato brightened, "Well, I think the JSSDF is going to get their asses kicked."

xxxxxx

The evas slid backwards to lock against their launch rails and fired up the catapults for the short ride to deployment inside the geofront. Once on the surface they found a small cache of weapons had been waiting for them.

Asuka picked up a pair of rocket launchers and grinned through the communication at Shinji, "you ready?

Shinji found confidence, the changes in his father's attitude for him had made him feel worthy, made him have spine, "Yeah, lets kick some ass."

And kick ass they did. Tanks, VTOL attack craft, APCs, everything was getting destroyed, either by physical attack or ranged weapons. Destruction was the order of the day with a side of collateral damage.

What _did_ give them pause were the nine white winged forms descending upon them.

They said the same thing, "Oh shit."

Xxxxxx

With Mal's group and a newly re-armed River defending the command center, things had returned to some semblance of normal. Normal enough that the bridge crew could monitor the sensors and the evas as they defended the base.

That was until the angel alarms started screaming at them. That destroyed any illusion of normality. "Pattern orange! Nine contacts confirmed!" Maya was in hysterics, the umbilical cables for the eva units had been severed, there was just no way they could fight _nine_ angels at once.

Aoba pulled up an image on the damaged projector at the front of the huge room, "We have a visu…my god, are those…?"

Hyuga finished for him, "Magi confirm…evangelions…"

They watched helplessly as the enemy descended on Shinji and Asuka, they had two minutes of power left, never going to be enough time.

They took out three of the enemy units before the rest started to pin them into a corner. There was simply no way to counter the giant swords they were wielding.

Maya's eyes opened wider, if that was possible, and she rechecked her panel, "Three more orange pattern contacts just appeared on our sensors…."

Hyuga slumped into his chair, "We're so boned."

xxxxxx

Rei's eyes opened wide in shock. Immediately after slipping back into existence the alarms rang out across the ship. Earth was below them, sensors confirmed that. They also confirmed nine orange pattern signatures. "Nine…orange AT field patterns…"

Misato jumped out of her chair, "Rei, get Asuka and Shinji, tell them to get ready to deploy!"

Rei practically leapt from her chair and ran to the cages. Misato turned to Saffron, who had officially become their pilot, she was good at it; apparently stealing ships was good practice. "Bring us down on those coordinates, full burn until with hit atmo, then give me everything you can without causing a blowback."

The girl nodded, and then Misato keyed up the com to ship wide, "All hands, condition Red, man battle stations and prepare for combat! Dino squadron, prepare for immediate deployment!"

The ship rapidly slid into the atmosphere, plasma licking across the hull as it dropped through the thinner layers of the atmosphere into the thicker ones. The ship slowed to a point where the flames died down and continued pressing on towards Toyko-3.

The flight control officer turned around from his console and faced his captain, "Ma'am, Dino squadron reports they are in the tubes and ready for launch."

She nodded as the ship approached the crater that used to be a city, "Confirm, launch all fighters, key in the transponder for Nerv craft, should be in the database, tell the pilots that any firefly class vessels are to be protected."

The crewman nodded and relayed the orders.

Misato hit the intercom again and opened contact with the cages, "Deploy evas!"

A series of three hatches opened up on the dorsal hull of the ship. Three eva units stepped out onto the hull itself and made for the edges, extending a high tension cable from its reel on the edge of the ship. Units 05, 01, and 00 jumped.

xxxxxx

Jayne was leading the group to the command center. That's where River was going to be, that's where Misato was supposed to go after deploying the pilots, and that's where Mal and the others were supposed to be.

It didn't turn out _exactly_ like that, as his group had joined up with the Misato/Wash/Zoë group on the way, but that actually was a positive.

Rei had regained consciousness while Jayne was carrying her, but she was still loopy so he didn't put her down, didn't trust her to walk on her own.

Finally having made their way to the bridge they arrived in time to see the visual of the second set of AT field signatures. The sight made he and the other passengers and crew of _Serenity_ cheer.

Maya also cheered too as she re-read her sensors, "It's a Nerv transponder! Receiving telemetry, it's deploying Eva units!"

Jayne caught sight of the blue cycloptic eva unit, he knew who the pilot was, "Well, guess you're savin me while I'm savin you, that there is a fun bit of irony."

xxxxxx

Asuka had hope again, some kind of huge ship with a giant Nerv logo on the hull was spitting out fighter craft, which were pounding on the mass production model eva units with extreme prejudice. The next thing was a huge shock, three eva units leapt from the same ship riding down on cables as if they were Special Forces dropping from a helicopter.

She looked at two of the units with a curious eye, she looked over at Shinji's unit, and then back to the one in the sky, she opened a communication to Shinji, "Ikari, am I hallucinating or are there two of Unit-01?"

Shinji spun his eva around and sure enough, he saw a carbon copy of his unit dropping down a cable like some kind of commando. As it neared the ground its cable detached from the ship it dropped from and fell to the ground, "_I, uh…well, I see it too..." _

The unit-00 doppelganger opened an audio communication with unit-02, "_Hey Asuka, catch!" _Asuka looked through the viewing screens and saw the other unit throw what looked like a pair of eva-sized M-16s. Reacting quickly she grabbed the guns from the air, spinning them around in place to point the barrels forward and proceeded to fire into nearest MP eva unit. _'Huh, her voice is so familiar, but I can't place it…it's so…cheery!'_ She didn't think on it long however; she had a job to do.

xxxxxx

"Dino flight, weapons free. Maniac, Slammer, form up on me, we're gonna raise some hell!" Eric Johnson was in his element; aerial combat. His fighter peeled off and rolled onto an attack vector on one of the MP eva units.

He and his two wingmen released a torrent of high caliber anti armor projectiles, peppering the unit with bloody holes as chunks of flesh ripped free from the head and torso regions. As if to add insult to injury the three ships released napalm canisters, which impacted the unit and covered part of it in flames.

"Whooohooo!" was the simultaneous cheer from the three.

xxxxxx

The people in the control room were in awe as the orange and black evangelion pressed its shotgun against one of the mass production eva's chest and pulled the trigger. The resulting shot put a hole through the center of the torso and send shards of core across the landscape.

Jayne cheered, "Now that's what I call riding shotgun!"

Everybody stared at him.

"What? It was against the shotgun and then…hey stop lookin at me like that."

xxxxxx

"Whaa." The man shuddered.

"You okay sarge?" a private asked.

"I just had the strangest feelin…" the man ducked as a JSSDF sniper shot at his cover, "Grif, go out and draw his fire!"

"What, and get shot?"

"That was the plan, actually."

"… I fucking hate you."

xxxxxx

"It's….too much!" Shinji was desperately trying to defend himself against the two evas double teaming him. He, like the others, had his hands full. After the orange and black eva made the first kill the remaining enemy units kept fighting back, more ferociously than they had before, and they were quickly losing ground.

The pilot of the orange and black eva screamed in pain as her unit's left arm and right leg were severed by two blows from the swords carried by the white evangelion units. Moments later it's entry plug shot skyward and out of the crater.

Something disturbing happened moments later, the two evas that had neutralized her began to _eat_ the disabled evangelion. Grabbing onto the remaining torso, the two flew into the sky on their white wings, soon after they were followed by their six surviving brethren. They began to circle the group on the ground, regenerating as they flew.

"What are they doing?" Asuka was getting impatient, sitting in her plug, waiting for what they were going to do. Unit-02 didn't have wings, couldn't fly. She was helpless against the other units while she was on the ground.

An audio only window popped up, and that same familiar voice came through, "_They…are waiting… waiting for the power to run out_."

Another window popped up, followed by another. Four way communications between the units were established, "_They're gonna wait for the activation time to run out, then attack. We…don't have any way to stop them._" This time the voice was older, masculine, yet still familiar.

"So, we're screwed then!?"

Shinji's voice answered her from his eva, "_Wow, this kinda sucks."_

xxxxxx

Maya was visibly scared, "Nothing…we can do nothing. Eva can't fly, we can't attack them! The pilots…are helpless."

Misato tried to make a helpful suggestion, "We still have unit-00 in the cage, we could get the positron rifle and shoot them down!"

Aoba shook his head, "No ma'am, we don't have the electrical power, and we have no pilot."

Misato protested, "But Rei-"

Simon cut her off, "Is in no condition to be doing anything of the sort! She's got a bad concussion, put her under neurological strain and you're just asking for brain damage!"

"But then…"

There was a quiet voice from the other end of the room, near the elevator to the cages, "You have a pilot."

They looked over to the sound of the voice in time to see River's face as the elevator doors closed in front of it. Simon scrambled over to the door before the elevator could begin its descent, "River! No! Remember what happened last time!"

Her voice grew small as the lift dropped, "I can do it this time Simon, there's no other choice. Goodbye."

Simon remained where he was standing, pounding ineffectually on the door, "damnit… I can't lose you…" He whispered as he sank to the floor.

Several minutes and several hundred bullets exchanged between JSSDF forces and the people defending the bridge later, Unit-00 was powering up.

Maya watched the progress on her screen as a communications window popped up, "_Launch Eva-00."_ The command was simple, and didn't leave much room for protest. Maya shot Misato a look, the older woman nodded. Maya pressed the button.

xxxxxx

"Disengage locking bolts." River commanded the onboard computer of the eva to comply. The locking bolts released and the eva slumped slightly on the launch platform, the only thing keeping it on the platform was gravity.

"Hmm, thirty seconds to surface…" She activated the progressive knife and armed the spike cannon in the left shoulder pylon. Moments later the eva reached the top of the elevator shaft, the platform sitting at ground level.

The eva, however was not stopped, it kept flying skyward as the inertia from the catapult catapulted her towards her enemy. As she approached she targeted one of the more damaged enemy units and fired the spike launcher through its wing. The tearing of the flesh ruined the ability of the wing to produce lift and the enemy unit spiraled towards the earth.

Reaching a second unit she grabbed onto the wing and spun flipped herself around onto its back. She ripped the progressive knife through the eva's wing and kicked off onto a third unit.

The third unit was ready; it rolled onto its back and threw its sword, which promptly changed shape into a long grey two pointed rod. This spear penetrated River's AT field like a cannonball through wet tissue paper and slammed into unit-00's single cycloptic eye, impaling the unit's skull.

River grabbed her head in pain and pulled the spear from the unit's head. Her monitors had gone dark, but for River that didn't matter. She just smirked and stared directly at where the enemy was, she didn't need eyes to see, "No power in the verse can stop me."

She turned the spear around and ran the enemy unit completely through, her weapon split its core in half, and she rode the now-corpse to the ground.

Not realizing her channel was still open, Rei stared at the other Unit-00 take down the third eva. She stared wide eyed, "Is that me?"

Asuka's voice came out loudly on her comm, "_What the hell is that supposed to mean!? Wait, are you Ayanami!?"_

Rei, in her entry plug, lost all facial expression _'damnit'_ she stumbled for words, "uhh _Nihongo-wa hanase masen!"_

Asuka didn't buy it, _"But you were just speaking Japanese!"_

"que?"

xxxxxx

In the control room, having heard the conversation, Jayne was laughing his ass off, and he wasn't alone, Misato had joined him in laughter.

xxxxxx

The two evas that had their wings 'clipped' came crashing to the earth, and the four pilots converged on them, quickly ripping into the flesh to find and destroy the core. Both Shinjis reached for it at the same time, and crushed it together, silencing the first eva, and then again the second.

xxxxxx

On the ground far away was Asuka. Her plug had buried itself in a soft hillside and she'd exited it. Upon her exit she fell ten feet into a lake, and had spent the last fifteen minutes swimming towards shoreline that _wasn't_ a cliff face.

It was then that her blood ran cold. One of the eva series had landed right in front of her and she could feel it _looking_ right at her. It didn't matter that it didn't have eyes, she somehow just _knew_ it was after her.

Its foot lifted and was descending towards her. She closed her eyes and waited for the end when she heard a series of explosions and the high pitched whine of ram-jet engines. She looked to the sky and grinned.

Flying in a low formation was Dino squadron; guns blazing as they pounded her would be executioner with enough ordnance to punch a hole in a planet.

Leading the charge was an old beat up Firefly with a pair of playing cards painted on the side; a Jack of Spades and a Jack of Clubs. It was the _Blackjack_, and it was dropping rapidly onto her position, bay door opening as it moved in, in a fast assault style landing. The ship dropped down within feet of her and Johnny's cheery voice came through the loudspeakers, "Hey little lady, need a ride?"

xxxxxx

Misato stood on the bridge of the _San Antonio_, a pleased smile on her face. This was going to end perfectly. The ship circled back towards the Geofront and the circling eva units and dropped in low on a direct course for them. As they approached she turned her attention to the weapons officer, "Get ready to fire the grappling harpoons, I want all weapons targeted and ready to fire as we reach firing range."

The ship cut rapidly through the air as it reached the enemy evangelion units. The harpoons fired and snared the remaining five, the cables going taut as they were pulled behind the engines; their own aerodynamic drag combined with the speed of the ship brought them directly into line with the engines.

Misato jumped from her chair, "Full burn now!"

Saffron complied, the ship lurched forwards the plasma burst from the engines igniting in the air and burning the flesh from the evas' wings and bodies.

Misato smirked, "Cut thrust on the port engine, as we come about fire a full broadside attack, all weapons!"

Thrust cut out on the port engine while starboard was still at full burn, the sudden massive thrust differential was hell on the ship's superstructure as stress fractures formed all throughout the ship. _San Antonio_ wasn't in good shape after the stunt, but she was far from being down for the count.

The thrust differential spun the ship around rapidly until the thrust on the second engine was cut, the ship ended up flying sideways through the sky as its entire gun and missile complement opened up on the heavily burned and damaged units.

It was over quickly, the five units had been too badly damaged to raise an AT field in time, and the combined firepower was more than enough to fracture their cores in the simultaneous detonation of thirty anti-ship missiles.

Misato dropped back into her chair, "bring our flight back under control, slow us and bring us around to land in the Geofront." She sighed, "We've won."

xxxxxx

Mal and he crew cheered as the final remains of their enemy crashed to the ground, the remaining Nerv personnel joined them.

Wash looked out at the viewscreen, a tear falling from his eye, "That…was the most amazing flying _I have ever seen!_"

Jayne shrugged, "It was okay."

Mal grinned, "That it was, hey Wash, maybe I'll hire saffron as my new pilot, she's pretty good at it."

Wash looked at his captain in horror, "You're not serious!"

Mal smirked, "You're right, I'm not."

xxxxxx

"So Gendo, what does it feel like to do the right thing?" Kaji asked nonchalantly as they flew the VTOL back to Nerv.

The older man looked out the window at the world below him, "It…doesn't make up for what I've done…" He managed a small smile, "But, it's a good start."

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Authors note: _Nihongo-wa hanase masen _means "I don't speak Japanese."

AN: This chapter will be the last chapter for a little while, i'm working on I, Rei right now, but rest assured i have not forgotten this story.

I also liked to end this chapter the way i did because it _can_ be an end to the story, though i don't plan to make it that way.


	10. Here Comes The Sun

This is the final chapter of A Chance to Change Everything.

It's been a wild ride, and this is long overdue.

* * *

The Geofront was an absolute mess. The roof and the majority of Tokyo 3 had been completely destroyed. The charred remains of the mass production evangelion units littered the landscape, and the partially eaten corpse of Unit-05 was in…chunks.

The engines sputtered and threatened to die as the _San Antonio_ attempted landing. The entire ship was damaged, more from the violent maneuvers Misato had ordered and less from actually combat damage. The engines themselves were put under a lot of strain by being forced to do things they were never designed to do while in atmo. The main structure of the ship had been put through extreme stress and as a result various systems had 'problems.' The landing equipment was one such system.

"Hey…Captain Katsuragi? I'm having some trouble landing the ship…" Saffron was methodically prodding the various primary, secondary, and tertiary landing control systems interface. She wasn't having much luck deploying enough landing struts to properly support the weight of the ship. If she couldn't do that the damage to the ship would be vastly increased from the added stress of uneven support of the ship's extreme mass.

"What's the problem? You just, you know, go down until you touch the ground." She was still high on the victory they had just achieved. They were not as lucky the last time around; this was a great victory for the human race. Third impact had 'killed' everybody on earth, and only a little over a quarter had ever come back from the great LCL Sea.

"Oh, we're gonna hit the ground pretty definitely, just without most of the landing equipment deployed." She tried pumping the manual priming handle for the hydraulic actuators that would deploy the landing gear.

"That…would be a problem. You know, I'm pretty tired of this ship, everything on it breaks so damn easily!" Misato sighed, "Any solutions?"

"We could try landing in the lake?"

Misato put her face into her palm, "Yeah, fine, let's do that." _'I hate my life so very, very much.'_

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The Units 02 and 01 returned to the cages after the MP Evas had been destroyed. As soon as the white monsters had been vanquished the JSSDF forces had offered an unconditional surrender and threw down arms. They realized that with their white allies destroyed and the 'hostile' Evangelions still active they had no chance of victory.

In the cages Shinji and Asuka disembarked from their respective entry plugs and dropped down onto the catwalk. The victory was a sweet one. They were met by a strangely familiar looking trio when they finally made it to the command deck to report their success in person.

"Who are you…?" Shinji was the first to find his voice.

In front of him were three people who he, though there was a huge age difference, could recognize immediately. The plugsuits they were wearing helped.

"I think you already know" The older Shinji said with a smirk on his lips.

The younger Asuka looked at the group in front of her with great skepticism. She settled her eyes on the older Rei, the _smiling_ Rei Ayanami. _'She can do that? What is this'_ "Ayanami? Since when does wondergirl smile? This is a trick right? Who are you really?"

The older (yet for some reason younger than her companions) Rei laughed. If one was perceptive they would have seen the older Asuka twitch slightly at the outburst. Rei spoke, "I'm Rei, really, just a little…different. It's funny what a little amnesia can do for a girl. You, Asuka, have not changed at all, you did very well out there. I'm quite impressed."

Younger Asuka smiled nervously, this new Rei was an improvement but she made the younger girl uneasy.

"So, what was that space ship? I didn't think anything like that existed… Just where did you guys come from?" Shinji inquired.

The older Asuka smirked, "Well now, that would be telling wouldn't it?"

-

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After Unit-00 had been recovered by recovery crews River Tam was extracted from the entry plug. Her right eye was a mess, most probably from synchronization feedback when the spear impaled the Eva's head.

She was taken to the medical wing where she was put under observation by her brother, his own medical skills exceeding that of the vast majority of the doctors employed by Nerv, with the possible exception of Ritsuko Akagi.

"She gonna be alright doc?" Said her visitor, who, surprisingly, was Jayne.

"Uh, thank you for the unexpected concern, I'm not sure we can save the eye, but she should live." Simon answered. He looked back from Jayne and to where his sister lay sedated in her bed, "What she did was stupid and irresponsible…but, I guess we couldn't have stopped her anyway, and… she may have saved all of us, so I'm not sure we should have tried."

"Girl did what she thought was right, can't blame her for that."

Simon cocked an eyebrow, "Indeed…"

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The _San Antonio_ made a big splash as it finally touched down on the surface of the lake, moments after initial contact various airbags deployed around the perimeter of the ship in order to stabilize it upon the water's surface. This served to not only help keep it afloat, but to keep it from rolling over in the water.

From a hatch on the top side came a thin grey haired figure, male but seemingly ageless. As he stepped out onto the hull several similar figures faded into existence around him. They were human… and also not. They had certain angelic attributes, not unlike the Angels who had failed to attack.

"It was a dangerous gamble, Tabris."

The grey haired Angel smirked that ever present smirk, "The payoff was worth it. This one will never have met me, but… I'm sure you'll agree that shifting the timeline was better for the long term survival of their race. You've seen this, and I've seen this. They proved themselves before, proved that they were the ones who should survive the war."

A thin woman wearing a skin tight black suit slid up from a hole in the hull of the ship, which sealed behind her, "And they _were_ worthy, as such we had to help, what we learned from the Third Impact the first time around."

A man with a pair of blue foils hanging from his back continued, "and we learned, for every evil man, there is a man of honor. For every Gendo Ikari, there is a Shinji Ikari. And even then, the man was not completely evil. He was motivated by love, which is what they have that makes them worthy."

Finally, the original speaker, a woman with a double helix pattern coiling up her arms spoke again, "Your point is valid… What are we to do now?"

The smirk fell from Tabris's face, "we leave, to let them start their new age. Our time is over… but theirs is just beginning."

He was answered by a chorus of nods, and slowly they faded out of existence. Tabris shot one last glance at the Nerv complex, and then he too disappeared.

The Angels were finally nothing more than a memory, a funny thing about memories though, is that some times they can become quite real for you again, but that's not for now.

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The Nerv forces of the current time period had been very helpful in returning the Evangelion units to the _San Antonio_ following the engagement with the Seele forces, as such, various crane equipment and VTOL craft were lifting the future Units-01 and 00 into place atop the launch lifts. The Evas and their new home were reunited.

Elsewhere on the ship a similar reunion was taking place.

"Mom!" the girl yelled as she ran fill tilt towards her mother, slamming into the older woman with the force that could only be mustered by a child wanting for their mother.

Misato was shaken by the impact, and quickly put her arms around her daughter; it was good to have her back after such a long time.

Andrea cried tears of joy and relief as she was held in her mother's arms after all that had happened that day.

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Little information was gleaned by Nerv before the crews of _Serenity_ and _San Antonio_ had returned to their respective ships and taken off. Said crews had decided that it was best that they not give away too much information about a future that may not actually take place in the same way, to avoid contaminating the timeline and inadvertently shape the future into the dystopia that it had been.

The repairs hadn't taken as long as one would have thought, as through something not quite coincidence, _San Antonio_'s systems shared a remarkable similarity to those at Nerv HQ in the Geofront.

And so, as the two ships took to the sky the people of Nerv stood watching as those who had shaped their lives so much in recent memory left for wherever it was that they came from.

Gendo Ikari was inspired, and decided in that moment that while he could never change the past and what he'd done to both Rei, by isolating her and stunting her socially, and to Shinji, by abandoning him, he would spend the rest of his life trying to make up for it. He owed it to Yui, and he owed it to his children.

Asuka decided to stop hiding her feelings, knowing how easily everything could be taken away. She kissed Shinji that day. A real kiss, a kiss with feeling behind it. Everything was going to get better from here on out, she was sure of it.

Shinji liked that. Shinji also realized that by not running away he made a real difference, and that he'd never run away again, and face his fears. That was what the visitors had shown him while he knew them.

Rei knew that she could feel love, she saw it in the face of her other self, and saw how she looked at that muscular mercenary, strange as that match-up may be. She could see the love Simon had for his sister, and the love he had for Kaylee. Yes, she wanted those things, and when she looked at Shinji she realized that she could in fact have them if she wanted.

Kaji and Misato found themselves with each other, with his job as a spy now defunct he was able to be everything Misato needed him to be. He was going to be that and so much more, if she would let him.

Misato came to similar conclusions as Kaji. With the threat of the Angels apparently gone, she could finally let her father rest, and move on with her life, take a positive direction and reach for the future.

Johnny had stayed behind. He wanted to be there and watch the future unfold, he wasn't a young man any more, and he needed a change of scenery. _Blackjack_ was to be retired, he'd put her on display, a tribute to those who'd helped save the world.

The entire assembled staff of Nerv snapped off a salute as the two ships reached the critical altitude and with a snap they jumped off to parts unknown. Nobody knew where they went, or if they would ever been seen again, but they knew that they owed them everything.

After the ships had left, things slowed down.

There had been talk of dismantling the Evangelions, but those ideas were quickly put down. While it was possible for the Evangelion to be used for ill intent, it would only be with the consent of their designated pilots, they wouldn't move for anybody else.

And should the Angels return, or should another group rise up and try to take Seele's place, they would be ready, and they would fight. That is why Nerv exists, after all.

Two years after what became known as the battle of Tokyo-3 Gendo Ikari found himself looking up from the floor of the Geofront at the construction of the new Toyko-3, a memorial to those lost and a beacon of hope for a brighter future.

He grinned, "God's in his heaven, all's right with the world." And this time, it was for real.

From somewhere in the distance, not far from a small melon patch, a radio played a song, it was somehow appropriate.

_Here comes the sun, here comes the sun,  
and I say it's all right_

_Little darling, it's been a long cold lonely winter  
Little darling, it feels like years since it's been here  
Here comes the sun, here comes the sun  
and I say it's all right_

_Little darling, the smiles returning to the faces  
Little darling, it seems like years since it's been here  
Here comes the sun, here comes the sun  
and I say it's all right_

_Sun, sun, sun, here it comes...  
Sun, sun, sun, here it comes...  
Sun, sun, sun, here it comes...  
Sun, sun, sun, here it comes...  
Sun, sun, sun, here it comes..._

_Little darling, I feel that ice is slowly melting  
Little darling, it seems like years since it's been clear  
Here comes the sun, here comes the sun,  
and I say it's all right  
It's all right_

* * *

There will be a continuation, we've got to know what happened to our friends from the future, right?


End file.
